Conferences on the Virtues
By Fr. Bruno Cocuzzi, ocd
Number 70
The Virtue of Religion…
We continue now
with the first and foremost of the virtues Affiliated with the Cardinal Virtue
of Justice, namely, Religion. At
the end of the June issue of this series, when we gave and explained the
definition, we spoke of it as a Moral and NOT a Theological Virtue, we spoke of
its material object: the deeds
and ritual actions that render to God the worship owing to Him as our
creator, Father, Supreme Lord and Master of All created beings, i.e., whatever
is not Himself.
My author makes
some observations based on what has already been said in last month’s
issue. He says,
1. The
Supreme Excellence of God is NOT the immediate BUT the remote (or foundational)
object of the Virtue of Religion. It is
awareness of His Transcendent Dignity, Majesty and Excellence that engenders
the duty and obligation to offer Him the Worship that is justly and rightly
owed to Him by His intelligent, free creatures.
2. The
debt of Worship of God, which the virtue of Religion inclines us habitually to
satisfy, is the most strict and pressing of all possible debts that can be
incurred. As stated at the close of
last month’s conference, however, it is impossible for us finite human beings
ever adequately to satisfy that debt, because God is infinitely worthy
of our Worship.
In
addition, it is impossible because whatever we do render HIM is not our own,
but is something we have already received from HIM (particularly Jesus
Eucharistic, by Whom alone can we fully satisfy our debt).
Then
again, every time we do offer Him our Worship, this becomes the source and font
of further free natural and supernatural gifts and blessings, which He confers
upon us. Another way of saying this is
that when we offer Him due worship, it is not He that is made somehow more
perfect (an impossibility), but it is ourselves that we are causing to
become more perfect, both as His human creatures and as His children by
adoption.
3. Religion
is not the virtue of Justice in the strict sense for more than one reason. As you recall, Justice requires that the good
rendered, as payment must be numerically or quantitatively EQUAL to the
debt (based on goods received) incurred.
Again,
Justice requires that the person owing and the person to whom the debt is owed
be utterly distinct and on a par with one another (peers). That is to say, there cannot be some bond of
relationship joining and identifying them with one another and thus
causing them to belong in some way to one another. Although it is true that as persons each of
God’s intelligent, free creatures is utterly distinct and separate from the
Three Distinct Divine persons, it is also true that we are identified with God
either as His servants (subject of Him as Supreme Lord and Master), or as His
children by adoption. Thus, Religion
only approximates and is analogous to the Virtue of Justice.
4. As
a Moral virtue, Religion must incline us habitually to give NEITHER too much
NOR too little to God in satisfying our debt of due worship. Though we can never give too much to God
QUANTITATIVELY speaking (as noted above), it is possible to give Him either too
much or not enough in regard to circumstances.
For example, we may spend too much time worshiping, that is, we might be
taking too much time away from our families or from fulfilling the duties of
our state in life. Or the type of
worship we offer could be excessively ornate and complicated or not
sufficiently expressive and symbolic of the Praise, Adoration, Glory,
Love and Gratitude we owe Him.
5. The
Virtue of Religion is not totally distinct from other virtues related to
Justice, such as, Fidelity, Observance and Gratitude, since all of them share
the same goal or objective, namely, by them we seek to satisfy our indebtedness
to God as our Creator and Supreme Lord and Master.
6. The
Virtue of Religion differs from the Virtue of Piety. The first orders us to God as our Creator and Lord. The latter is a gift of the Holy Spirit by
means of which we reverence God as Our Father, Whose Life we share by means of
the created participation in Divinity we call Sanctifying Grace.
7. Religion
differs from obedience and Humility (also affiliated with the virtue of
Justice) because these do not have as their direct purpose to bespeak the
Supreme Excellence of God.
By
Obedience we submit ourselves to HIM in and through our lawful
superiors, who are His representatives, in so far as He confers upon them a
share of His authority over us.
By
Humility we tend to be submissive to others, not directly, but in the sense
that we impose restraint upon ourselves so as not to demand or expect more from
others than our true status in the sight of God permits. Indeed, the virtue of Humility inclines us
to think of ourselves as vile in comparison to God, and thus never ever to
think that we are unduly put upon or made to suffer unjustly. Actually, in imitation of the great Saints,
we can even think of ourselves as the worst of all sinners, in so far as we can
rightly believe that if others had been given the gifts that we have received
from God, they would have made a better return to God than we have.
And
conversely, if we had received the exact gifts that any other individual has
received from God, we would not have made nearly as good a return to Him as
that person has done.
8. The
virtue of Religion also differs from the Theological and Supernatural Virtues
of Faith, Hope and Charity. Unlike the
former, the latter do not have as their purpose to bear witness to the Supreme
Excellence of God. Rather they confer
upon us the power to adhere to God as our Ultimate goal and beatitude. Faith enables us to adhere to and become one
with God the Supreme Truth; Hope enables us to adhere to and become one with
God as the Source and Font of our Final Perseverance as His children by
adoption (in virtue of His Promises), and Charity enables us to adhere to and
become one with God Who is Supreme Goodness and Lovable-ness.
9. With
regard to Charity there is another special reason why it is distinct from the
virtue of Religion. By Charity we Love
God as someone Who has communicated Himself to us in love. The virtue of Religion worships in God the
Excellence and Transcendence that cannot be shared with or Communicated to
any created being. Religion is founded
on our being distinct from and being substantially much, much less than God.
At
the same time, Love for God (charity) is not totally distinct from the Love we
have for our fellow human beings, since by creation and by Sanctifying Grace
(in the case of Baptized Christians) God has conferred upon each human being a
degree of Created Goodness that far, far surpasses that of all other kinds of
creatures in the material universe.
10. The
virtue of religion is more excellent than all the other moral virtues,
including that of Justice, to which it is affiliated. That is because by it we honor God directly and immediately. When we exercise the other moral virtues we
directly and immediately render a kind of honor to other human beings,
and by that very fact indirectly honor God the Creator and Father of
all.
Question
2 – The Object of Religion: Divine
Worship…
Worship is
nothing more than the external expression of Honor rendered to someone who is
not only Superior and more excellent, but who is also someone upon whom the
worshipper is dependent.
It is true that
even those who are Superior and more Excellent owe honor to individuals
who are inferior and dependent upon them, but the ways in which they manifest
it externally IS NOT called worship.
After all, God DOES HONOR the Saints, just as Parents [should] honor
their children, and Teachers their students.
True worship
has to be expressive of BOTH acknowledgement or dependence AND submission to
the Superior. With respect to God, it
externally manifests our recognition of God as First Principle or Source
of all created being and our willing subordination to Him as such, that is, as
Supreme Lord.
Is there a
Natural Law that binds every human being to offer due worship to God?
The author of
my textbook says that there is both a Natural Law and a Divine Positive Law
that obliges us to offer worship to God.
To prove there is a natural Law, he appeals to reason. To prove there is a Divine Positive Law, he
appeals to Sacred Scripture.
1. Reason
tells every human being, he says, that there exists a Supreme Being who is the
First Principle and thus the Efficient and Exemplary Cause (Creator) of all
created beings. As such He is the
Supreme Lord both in regard to ourselves personally and in regard to everything
that pertains to us and necessary to live a truly human life. Since that means that by our very nature
we are His Servants, we owe it to Him that we acknowledge Him as our origin and
our Lord, upon whom we are totally dependent.
That
this Natural Law exists is verified by the fact that from time immemorial all
peoples on the earth, even the most primitive, have practiced a religion, in
spite of the fact that, due to Original Sin, it became impossible for humans to
attain an accurate and pure knowledge of Him through reason alone. How inaccurate and how corrupt the natural
knowledge of Him became in the course of centuries is evidenced by the fact
that many primitive peoples thought that God was demanding of them such
perverse things as human sacrifice and so called sacred prostitution.
On
the other hand, oddly enough, as the human race became more sophisticated,
instead of the emergence of a more noble and perfect natural knowledge
of Divinity through reason, the tendency emerged to deny that God even
exists. Nowadays, it seems that
advanced technology in unlocking the secrets of nature and exploiting them has
caused further aberrations, namely those of tampering with human genetics in an
attempt to engineer human life itself.
In other words, it seems that the more modern humans learn about nature,
the more they tend to think that they themselves ARE GOD.
2. This
latter development tends also to obscure the truth that God, in creating us,
along with all that we need to lead good and decent lives as humans, IS OUR
BENEFACTOR. Also obscured is the
conviction that, as such, we owe Him a debt of Gratitude. Not only that, it is a recurring debt. We incur it every time we draw a
breath. It is through the virtue of
Religion that this ongoing debt is discharged, and needs to be discharged, on a
daily basis.
3. The
Divine Positive Law to worship God (which we are inclined to do spontaneously
and sweetly when we possess the virtue of Religion), is found in the Book of
Exodus, Chapter 20, verse 2 & following:
I
am the Lord Your God…You shall not have strange gods before me…You shall make
for yourselves no graven image…Nor shall you adore or worship any [image]…
You shall not take the Name of the Lord your God
in vain…
Remember
to keep holy the Sabbath day…The seventh day is the Sabbath of the lord…
The above three
paragraphs embody the three duties of Fidelity, Observance (or Reverence)
and Service (i.e., to Serve Him), all of which enable us to satisfy the
obligation everyone has to order his/her entire life to God.
As we had
occasion to say above, the material objects of divine worship are the acts by
means of which we signify God’s Supreme Excellence and our submission to Him as
our Lord and Benefactor.
Certain acts do
so by their very nature, such as to genuflect or to bow deeply before Him, or
to have recourse to Him in Prayer.
Other acts
signify the same recognition and submission indirectly. They are often specific acts of virtues
other than that of Religion, yet nevertheless commanded by or under
the direction of the virtue of Religion.
Examples of these would be Fasting, which pertains to the virtue
of Temperance; or Almsgiving, which pertains to the virtue of
Mercy. These lend themselves very well
to the task of manifesting our recognition of God as Lord (true Owner) of all
that we have and are on the one hand, and as Benefactor of each and every human
being, on the other.
Worship is
internal as well as external. Among the
former are the interior dispositions of Devotedness (Devotion) and Prayerfulness. Examples of the external would be Praying
Aloud and a Sacrifice.
Worship must
certainly be internal as revealed in John 4:23,24: …the time is coming, nay has already come, when true
worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth; such men as these
the Father claims for His worshippers.
God is a spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in
truth. Nevertheless, such internal
acts must also be manifested externally by means of appropriate visible bodily
acts.
The reason
being of course is that both body and soul belong to God (we are only the
stewards thereof), and the body must also participate in worship. Besides, it is through the body that
internal, spiritual acts and dispositions can be manifested externally. Then again, external acts serve to stimulate
and foster internal and spiritual dispositions. Finally, because we are social beings as well, Worship needs to
be social and public, too.
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