to the divine purpose.

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