Therefore He is also to be worshipped as the Judge who shall judge the living and the dead. He who will come again is to be adored as the Creator and Redeemer and Judge of all mankind. And He sits there in all the royalties of His Father's Kingdom. 'All power in heaven and on earth is given unto Me;' and He is adored there both as God and man in the glory of the Ever-blessed Trinity. And as He is to be adored with divine worship at the right hand of the Father, so He is to be adored upon the altar present in the Blessed Sacrament. And wheresoever He is adored in heaven or on earth, His Sacred Heart is adored with divine worship. For the Sacred Heart is the Heart of God the Son, the true and proper Object of divine adoration and of divine worship. If this be not so, what is it that we say, day by day, at the altar, what have we been saying now in the ' Gloria in excelsis:' ' Thou only art holy, Thou only art the Lord, Thou only, 0 Christ Jesus, art most high in the glory of God the Father' ? ( Phil. ii. 9-11.) For which cause God also hath exalted Him, and hath given Him a name which is above all names; that in the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth: and that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father.' 18 What is this worship but divine worship ? What is this glory but divine glory ? What is this but the very words of the Evangelist ?—' The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us; and we saw His glory, the glory as it were of the Only-begotten of. the Father' in the depths and the splendours of the uncreated light of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
I have drawn out this doctrine, so far as time permits, in greater fulness, not without a purpose. At the outset I said that the doctrine of the Incarnation is the test of the true disciples of Jesus Christ. The Apostles who conversed with Him, and then preached His Incarnation to the world, were the witnesses that God was come in the flesh. They declared His divine glory. The test of their true discipleship was their fidelity to this truth, which is His very Person. So is it with us. And as the Incarnation is the test of our true discipleship, the divine worship and glory of the Sacred Heart is the test of our true faith in the doctrine of the Incarnation. Any man who denies this, or even a shadow of its perfect truth—any man who, by subtle distinctions, attempts to deprive the Sacred Heart of divine worship and glory—thereby convicts himself of heresy. 1
1 But, you say again, we do not give adoration to a creature. O, fools, why do you not understand that the body of the Lord which was made does not receive the adoration of a creature, for it is become the body of the uncreated Word, and to Him whose body it is become you offer your worship. It is therefore adored as it ought to be, and it is divinely adored, for the Word is God, whose own body it is. Wherefore when the women approached the Lord, He hindered them, and said, " Touch Me not, for I am not yet ascended to My Father." .... And yet approaching Him they held His feet, and adored Him. They held the feet and adored God, feet having bones and flesh that might be touched, but being the feet of God they adored God: and, in another place, the Lord said, " Touch Me, and see, that a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see Me to have." S. Athanasii contra Apollin. lib. i. sect. 6, torn. i. p. 926, ed. Bened.
Again he says: ' Who is there so mad as to say, " Stand apart from the body, that I may worship thee."» Ep. ad Adelphium, sect. 3, tom. i. p. 913.
S. Thomas (p.iii. q. xxv. art. 1): 'Is the Divinity of Christ and His Humanity to be adored by one and the same adoration?'
He quotes the Fifth General Council, canon ix., and affirms that the Divinity and Humanity of Christ are to be adored with one and the same adoration.
In art. 2 he asks whether the Humanity of Christ is to be adored with the adoration of latria. He answers that the Humanity of Christ is to be adored with latria.
