One of the benefits of Latin being the official language of the Catholic Church is that it is a “dead” language. In other words, a language no longer in use in the world outside of Church and academia; a language no longer subject to the evolution of usage in the world. For example, “peruse” technically means to examine in a thorough or careful way, but in everyday use it is used and understood to mean to “glance over a document.”  The word has evolved to mean something very different. Words in Latin have meant the same thing for centuries. Over the centuries the Church’s use of certain words form a lexicon of language – something quite true in the lexicon of the Eucharist.

The English language is flexible and words that are related in a general way sometimes take on the meanings of their “cousin” words. For example: when related to the Eucharist outside of Mass, which, if any, of these words are properly applied to the Eucharist: worship, adore, venerate? Of course, maybe that was a trick question given Latin’s use in the Catholic Church. Perhaps the only truly correct answer has to be in Latin.

While worship is also correct, in English the tradition is to speak of “Adoration” as a sign of devotion to and worship of Jesus Christ present in body, blood, soul, and divinity, under the appearance of the consecrated host. From a theological perspective, the adoration is a form of latria, based on the tenet of the real presence of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. Latria or latreia (also known as latreutical worship) is a theological term (Latin Latrīa, from the Greek λατρεία, latreia) used in Catholic theology to mean adoration, a reverence directed only to God. Latria carries an emphasis on the internal form of worship, rather than external ceremonies.

In the 16th century, the Council of Trent made specific affirmations of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the theological basis for Eucharistic adoration and stated: “The only-begotten Son of God is to be adored in the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist with the worship of “latria”, including external worship.” Pope Paul VI’s 1965 encyclical Mysterium fidei: also affirmed this belief and in paragraph 56 stated: “The Catholic Church has always displayed and still displays this latria that ought to be paid to the Sacrament of the Eucharist, both during Mass and outside of it.”

Do we venerate the Eucharist? Based on “cousin words,” we might respond positively to the question. But in the Catholic Church “venerate” is the English translation of dulia.  So, do we venerate the Eucharist? No, as explained above “latria” and its current English translation as “adore” is the correct answer. Latria may be offered only to God, but Catholic Christians offer other degrees of reverence to the Blessed Virgin Mary and to the other saints; these non-sacrificial types of reverence are called hyperdulia and dulia, respectively. In English, dulia is also called veneration. Hyperdulia is essentially a heightened degree of dulia provided only to the Blessed Virgin.

This distinction, written about as early as Augustine of Hippo and St Jerome, was detailed more explicitly by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae, A.D. 1270: “Reverence is due to God on account of His Excellence, which is communicated to certain creatures not in equal measure, but according to a measure of proportion; and so the reverence which we pay to God, and which belongs to latria, differs from the reverence which we pay to certain excellent creatures; this belongs to dulia, and we shall speak of it further on (103)”; in this next article St. Thomas Aquinas writes: “Wherefore dulia, which pays due service to a human lord, is a distinct virtue from latria, which pays due service to the Lordship of God. It is, moreover, a species of observance, because by observance we honor all those who excel in dignity, while dulia properly speaking is the reverence of servants for their master, dulia being the Greek for servitude”.

Latria, dulia (hyperdulia) forms the lexicon of the Church. In English, our lexicon is “adore” and “venerate” respectively.

Image credit: G. Corrigan, CANVA, CC-BY-NC