And when we actually worship God, worship Him with the worship of latria, our act must be of the same essential nature; it must be an act of sacrifice, of self-giving; the offering of ourselves to the will of the Father.  So it is in our participation in the offering of the Blessed Sacrifice.  The full meaning of our joining in that act is that we are uniting ourselves with our Lord’s offering of Himself, and as members of His Body share in the sacrifice of the Body which is the supreme act of worship.  And our other acts of worship lay hold on and proceed from this which is the ground of their efficacy.  All our subordinate acts of worship, so to call them, have their character and vitality as Christian acts of the worship of God because of the relation of the worshipper to God as a member of the Body of His Son.  They are offered through the Son and derive their potency from their association with Him and His sacrifice.  They reach God through the sacrifice of the One Mediator.

Worship, then, in this complete sense, is due to God alone; and it is separated by a whole heaven from any worship, that is, honour, which can be offered to any creature, however exalted.  No instructed person would for a moment imagine that the prayers which we address to the saints are in any degree such worship as is offered to God; but in as much as those who are unfamiliar with the forms of the Catholic Religion in its devotional expression may easily be led astray, it seems needful to stress this fact of the difference between simple petition and such acts and prayers as involve the highest degree of worship.

One of the chief sources of confusion in this matter is the failure to distinguish between the nature of the act of worship, which is determined by the person to whom it is directed, and the mere adjuncts of the act.  But an act of latria is not constituted such by the fact that it is aided in its expression by such circumstances as banners, lights, incense and so on.  These are quite appropriate to any act of honour, and have been customarily so used in relation to human beings.  There was a certain hesitation in the Church for some time in the matter of incense which under the older Covenant had been especially appropriated to God, because in the experience of the early Church it was demanded, and necessarily refused, as an acknowledgment of the divinity of the Emperor.  But with the passing of the pagan empire incense as the universal symbol of prayer came into use in all manner of services wherein intercession was a part.

Such adjuncts therefore are not foreign to those subordinate acts of worship or honour which are technically known as dulia.  Dulia—­this word means service—­is such honour as may be rightly rendered to creatures without at all encroaching upon the majesty of God.  It is that degree of worship that we have in mind when we speak of the worship of the saints.  That dulia of the