In most dioceses throughout the United States, they transfer the celebration of the Solemnity of the Lord’s Ascension to the Sunday after Ascension Thursday, so they never celebrate the Seventh Sunday of Easter.  Here in New Jersey, we do not, so that means we priests have to develop a homily for the Seventh Sunday of Easter. Of course this has never really been a problem for me as a priest, but since we just started a message series, “Half-Truths,” it has caused a hiccup.  The series does not have a message outline for the Seventh Sunday of Easter; clearly they are in a diocese that does transfer the celebration.

    However, since the Seventh Sunday of Easter also happens to be Mother’s Day this year, I thought of a “half-truth” to talk about.  It would go something like this, “Christians know that they should only worship God, yet Catholics also seem to worship Mary, the mother of Jesus, so they are doing something wrong.”

    It is absolutely true that we should only worship and adore God.  This is why the Greatest Commandment Jesus tells us is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our mind, and all our strength.  Sin is when we allow something else to take the place of God in our lives. Instead of doing God’s will, we seek to do our own will. We become so attracted to something in God’s creation, that we place it in the center of our lives, while pushing God, the Creator, out of the center.

    So like all “half-truths,” there is something very true in the statement.  The problem, the false part, has to do with our relationship with the Blessed Mother.  If you go into any Catholic church you will find a statue or icon of Mary. Usually it is in a place of prominence, often with flowers and candles around it.  We pray the Rosary; some of us pray it every day. We celebrate feast days in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Clearly, the Blessed Mother is a very important part of the spiritual life of Catholics.

However, Catholics do not worship Mary.  The confusion comes about from not understanding what it means to worship.  From time immemorial, worship has always involved the act of sacrifice. The Jewish people would sacrifice animals in the Temple in Jerusalem as part of their worship of God.  Even when they started to build local synagogues, they made a distinction between a place of worship -- which was only done in the Temple in Jerusalem -- and a place of prayer -- which is what they did in synagogues.

Today, it seems that most people have forgotten that sacrifice is an essential aspect of worship.  Protestants threw out the principle of sacrifice as part of worship about 500 years ago, thus it is understandable that they are suspicious of Catholics relationship with Mary.  For Protestants, prayer and worship became the same thing.

Sadly, many Catholics today have also forgotten the principle of sacrifice.  The “Holy Sacrifice of the Mass” has been replaced with language of gathering around the table/altar for a sacred meal.  A meal was also an essential aspect of worship in Jewish faith, because it was by eating of the sacrificial victim that they participated in the sacrifice and received the benefits of the sacrifice.  Catholic theology still holds this to be true: Jesus is the perfect sacrificial victim, offered on the Cross, and He gave us the Eucharist, His Body and Blood, so that we can participate in His sacrifice and receive the benefits that come from it -- new life with God the Father.  

Because the majority of American Catholics don’t have a clue what the sacrifice business is all about, and therefore they don’t know what worship is supposed to be about either. Like Protestants they have come to think that worship is all about hearing a sermon, singing some songs and praying.

Well, the Catholic faith has been around for a long time, and believe it or not, these questions have been asked before, and Catholics have the answer. It goes like this: there are three categories of respect due in the realm of worship. They go by specific names: Latria, Dulia and Hyperdulia. Latria is worship. It is the worship that is due only to God. This worship consists of offering God our lives, our souls, our minds and our bodies as a living sacrifice (Romans 12. 1-2).  We do this pre-eminently through the sacrifice of the Mass.

Dulia is not worship. It is honor. We honor anyone who is eminent and accomplished. We honor our loved ones, like we are honoring our mothers today. Part of this honor is that we ask them for things. We come to them with our needs. They are our role models and mentors. We have a relationship to them. Dulia is also what we give to the saints and angels. We give them the honor that is due to them. As part of this we have a relationship with them. We ask them for things. This is called “praying to the saints.”

Hyperdulia is the honor we give to the Virgin Mary. We give her the highest honor because she is unique amongst all God’s creation.  She is the only created being who was honored by God so greatly that his son took his flesh from her. She has totally unique place of honor in heaven and therefore also amongst all of God’s people on earth. The honor we give her, therefore, and the dulia we give her is higher than any other being, so we call it “hyperdulia.” But it is not latria. We’re clear about that. We do not worship Mary. The sign of this is that we do not make sacrifice to her.  The sacrifice of the Mass is offered to God the Almighty Father.

We should also understand that the hyperdulia and dulia which we give to Mary and the saints is ultimately honor given to God. We honor the saints (including the Blessed Mother) not for who they are, but for who God made them to be. We honor in them the completed work of grace. We honor in them their faithful obedience, which itself is a gift from God. The Blessed Mother says, “the Almighty has done great things for me!” We honor Mary and the saints because we are struck with delight and awe at the wonderful things God has done for them. As the moon reflects the sun, so the Virgin and saints reflect the light of Christ. Without him they are nothing. With him they have become divinized–sons and daughters of the Almighty Father.

Finally, we insist that it is proper devotion to the Blessed Mother which corrects all the other errors. When Marian devotion plays its proper part in the life of the Church we also start to realize what real worship is, and how important the sacrifice of the Mass is to everything else. This is why, despite misunderstandings we come back time and again to thank God for Mary and to honor her as the greatest of all created beings.