I am the lord thy God though shalt have strange God's before me.
The Catechism on worships says, "To adore God is to acknowledge him as God, as the Creator and Savior, the Lord and Master of everything that exists, as infinite and merciful love." (CCC 2096) Which is more or less an affirmation of what Jesus said when he quoted Deuteronomy 6:13 in Luke 4:8, "And Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.'""
The question that arises often enough is the difference between, worship and veneration. Worship, as noted above, is most certainly reserved exclusively for God because He is the only one deserving of it. Veneration on the other hand is the honor given to persons, places or things that draw us closer to heaven.
Through Old Testament examples such as the Ark of the Covenant and the bronze serpent, it can be seen that God does not forbid veneration of Holy things. After all, why after giving the Israelites the Commandments do these objects of veneration appear?
Thomas Aquinas sums up the proper application of worship quite well:
"Religious worship is not directed to the images in themselves, considered as mere things, but under their distinctive aspect as images leading us on to God incarnate. The movement toward the image does not terminate in it as image, but tends toward that whose image it is."
Now, that may initially be kind of confusing but if one keeps in mind that we are all made in the image and likeness of God, it becomes clear. For instance, religious worship of God through the Saints might go like this: A Holy Card is as an image of a saint that when we move toward we tend toward the Saint who is in turn also an image of God that in moving toward allows us to tend towards God Himself. The object of our worship then is clearly God.
Holy Card -> image of Saint -> image of God -> God
We must follow the chain through to God whenever we seek to worship Him. Communication with the saints, who we believe to not be dead but alive in Christ, surely seems to stop the line at the Saint but that is where the differences between veneration and worship are important.
Take for example, the honor that a painter would wish to receive at his masterpiece. If you were to only stare at the painter, he would respond, "what are you looking at???" and try to redirect your focus to his art. For by honoring his art you would actually be giving him the greater honor. However, it is very important to note that on the other extreme you could wrongfully assign the glory exclusively to the art. God, as the ultimate designer and artist, wants us to worship Him and to acknowledge the beauty He has created. Not to do as the atheists/scientists of modern times do and "(they) suppose(d) that either fire or wind or swift air, or the circle of the stars, or turbulent water, or the luminaries of heaven are(were) the gods that rule the world." (wisdom 13:2)
Go and Set the World on Fire
Random last note: Yeah, yeah, the whole "second Canon"/deuterocanonical books or what protestants call "the apocrypha" is where the book Wisdom/Wisdom of Solomon is, but I still tried fruitlessly to search blueletterbible for it. Imagine this: Coming to the realization Protestants lack Wisdom.... err.. their bibles lack wisdom?... err.. yeah, when I said it out loud the first time it just didn't sound right either.
5 comments:
heh. We don't lack quite as much wisdom as you might guess. Maybe we're just better at hiding it. ;) And, if given a choice between direct personal admiration vs. admiration of something I've created, I'll take the personal admiration every time, assuming it was sincere.
Hmm, you do have a good point, but why hide it under a bushel basket? LoL, just kidding. I just had to put in that joke about Wisdom because I came across it so accidentally.
Also, I was so focused on giving some basic reasoning behind the veneration of the saints, I forgot to mention something else. That is that God has something that most artists don't have and that is His intrinsic goodness which is so overwhelming that we if we were to encounter Him, we would either be destroyed in a blast of love or fall to the ground alive only out of his mercy. Truth is a terrible and mighty power.
However, what I must emphasize is that veneration of the Saints in no way detracts from one's focus on God. Rather it affirms it, making one's focus in all aspects of his life towards God.
As a side note: In a vision someone saw of of a saint that had died recently, the dead saint reminded the one who saw the vision that his closeness to God and potential for intercession while good was nothing compared to uniting one's prayers with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Another hairy subject, I suppose.
i think you are referring to trans-substatiation. for a protestant, the old animal sacrifices and the New Sacrifice removes the sin that hindered our communion with God, rather than adding any particular power to our prayers. since the Bible says that God doesn't listen when the wicked pray, the Lord's death and resurection is what removes our wickedness, thus opening the Lord's ears to our prayers. in light of this, i would rather rejoice in the fact that the Lord's sacrifice sets me right with my Father than that it gives me an audience before the throne. at the same time, how awesome it is that i can share the deepest thoguhts of my heart with Him, that i can "come boldly before the throne of grace"! trembling and guilty, weighed down by the accusations of my conscience, as often as not, but still, i can come boldly.
what is your take on the ripping of the temple curtain? for protestants, that symbolizes the openning of the holy of holies and direct communion with the Lord. (tie in with "thou hast made us kings and priests" or whatever it says in that one verse in Hebrews), and all that about "having broken down the middle wall of partition between us"? yes i read very carefully what you said and i did notice that you believe in direct communication with the Father as much as i do, so i'm not really even sure anymore why i think it's wrong to talk to saints...... except, i'm not sure that there's any scriptural evidence of their being able to hear us. unless it's in the... uh... i'm trying to remember the correct name for the apochrypha...
and my infamous "not knowing how to type" problem begins to reveal itself...
Yeah, as I said it's a hairy topic.
Transubstantiation, yeah, that's the technical term for the bread and wine becoming Jesus's Body and Blood because we had to define the difference between what some heretics believed; con-substantiation or something along those lines.
Jesus's sacrifice on the cross is not repeated at the Mass, but you may have already figured that out at this point. It is re-presented in the sense of Anamnesis as per Jesus's command to "do this in memory of Me" (luke22). This is not a re-enactment of Christ's sacrifice because, well, our model for it, the Last Supper, actually happened before He died as well. However, Christ's graces are beyond time and in that sense we participate.
There is evidence in the Bible that the Saints can hear us, even I don't think they are the best forms of proof. However, looking at history, it makes sense because at the time of the writing of the New Testament books there was not the multitudes of those who had died for the faith that could be classified as Saints.
Btw, we are all called to be saints, I just can't bring myself to presume that I have the qualifications to rank with such holy people.
However, I have totally digressed. What I wanted to say is that prayer for the intercession of the Saints and prayer to God, is a "both, and" sort of thing. It's kind of like communicating with our friends and asking for their intercession. Asking one's friends for their prayers is possibly unnecessary but it is not detrimental. Think of it this way: We are all many parts but we are all one body, one body in Christ. Communication with the parts is beneficial. Moreover, those that have died and gone before us, have eternal life and are therefore not dead, at least in the spiritual sense.
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