Christ's Sacred Humanity as Object of Divine Worship

Thesis II: Because of Its Hypostatic Union with the Logos, the Humanity of Our Lord Is Entitled to Divine Worship in Itself, Though Not for Its Own Sake

This proposition, while not strictly an article of faith, is generally held to be revealed truth, fidei proxima at least.

Stating the Question Precisely

There is a large gap between two propositions: “Christ’s humanity is adored in itself” and “Christ’s humanity is adored for its own sake.” The first means Christ’s human nature is the immediate object of divine worship (its material, though only partial, object); the second would mean it is the reason — the formal object — for that worship. The second claim would be false and blasphemous, since Christ’s sacred humanity remains, essentially, a creature. Its adorability rests not on any Monophysite deification, but simply and solely on the Hypostatic Union: Christ’s humanity never existed apart from the Logos, but was assumed into Him as a “quasi-part.” Whatever belongs substantially to a person is owed the same specific veneration as the person — the reverence paid a monarch is not confined to his soul but extends to his body too, and in both respects remains one undivided absolute worship, directed primarily to the royal person and only secondarily to whatever belongs essentially to him. John Wyclif was therefore wrong to claim Christ’s sacred humanity is entitled only to relative worship — the union of Divinity and humanity in the God-man is far more than a merely moral bond.

The Jansenist Synod of Pistoia (1794) insinuated maliciously that “direct adoration of Christ’s manhood amounts to rendering divine honors to a creature” — a proposition Pope Pius VI formally condemned as “false, deceptive, injurious to and derogating from the pious and due worship the faithful have offered and will offer to the humanity of Christ.”¹

The Scriptural and Patristic Case

That Christ’s sacred humanity is a fitting material object of divine adoration can be shown from Scripture and the unanimous teaching of the Fathers.

“The lamb that was slain is worthy to receive power, and divinity, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and benediction” (Apocalypse 5:12).

The Fathers give several converging reasons. First: were we not permitted to adore Christ’s sacred humanity directly, in itself, then the Second Person of the Trinity Himself would be deprived of latria altogether — since the Incarnate Word exists only as God-man. St. Athanasius presses this point: “We by no means adore a creature — that is the error of the pagans and the Arians. But we adore the Lord of the creature, God the Word made flesh. For though the flesh is, in itself, something created, it has become the body of God. In adoring this body, we do not separate it from the Word, nor, in wishing to adore Him, do we detach the Word from His flesh… Who, then, is so foolish as to say to the Lord, ‘Depart from Thy body, that I may adore Thee’?”² St. Epiphanius echoes this: “Let no one say to the Only-Begotten, ‘Set aside Thy body, that I may adore Thee’ — rather, adore the Only-Begotten together with the body, the Uncreated One together with the temple He assumed at His descent.”³

Second, against the Apollinarist slander that those who worship Christ’s sacred humanity merely worship “a man and mere flesh,” St. Athanasius answers indignantly in his first book against Apollinaris: “Again you say, ‘We do not adore the creature.’ Fools! Do you not see that the Lord’s created body must receive more than the veneration owed to a mere creature? For it has become the body of the uncreated Word, and it is Him whose body it is that you adore. This body, then, is adored with due divine worship, because God — the Word — is the one whose body it is. So the women … embraced His feet and adored — they held His feet, but they adored God.”⁴

Third: since Christ’s sacred humanity is adorable in itself, we owe the same divine worship to His body and blood as they are truly present in the Holy Eucharist. Commenting on Psalm 98:5, St. Ambrose writes: “By ‘footstool’ is meant the earth, and by ‘earth,’ the flesh of Christ — which we also adore today in the mysteries [of the Eucharist], and which the Apostles adored in the Lord Jesus. For Christ is not divided, but one.”⁵ St. Augustine expounds the same verse: “‘Adore his footstool.’ Uncertain, I turn to Christ, since it is Him I seek here, and I find how the earth … and his footstool may be adored without impiety. For He took earth from the earth, since flesh is from the earth, and He took flesh from the flesh of Mary. And since He walked here on earth in this very flesh, and gave us that same flesh to eat for our salvation — and no one eats that flesh without first adoring it — we have found how such a footstool of the Lord’s feet may be adored, and that far from sinning by adoring it, we would sin by not adoring it.”⁶

Fourth: the worship we give Christ’s sacred humanity is not idolatry, because we do not adore mere flesh, but flesh hypostatically united to the Divine Logos. St. John Damascene develops this with an almost Scholastic precision: “The flesh is not adored in its own nature, but is adored together with the Incarnate Logos — not indeed for its own sake, but for the sake of the Logos to whom it is hypostatically united. For we do not profess that it is bare, simple flesh that is adored, but the flesh of God, God made flesh.”⁷

A Disputed Question: Does Christ’s Humanity Also Merit Dulia?

Theologians dispute whether Christ’s sacred humanity, considered strictly in itself apart from the Hypostatic Union, deserves — beyond latria — the further worship of dulia, or more specifically hyperdulia, directed at its purely created perfections (sanctifying grace, the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, and so on).⁸

The Thomists answer yes.⁹ Suarez agrees, holding that Christ’s claim to hyperdulic worship rests on the innumerable, exalted natural and supernatural excellences of His sacred humanity.¹⁰ But this runs into a serious objection: such an inferior mode of worship risks diminishing Our Lord’s divine dignity.¹¹ That Christ is theoretically entitled to several distinct kinds of worship does not license actually giving Him a cult that, at its lowest, sinks below the level of latria His sacred humanity strictly deserves. No good Catholic would dream of honoring the Pope merely as Bishop or Cardinal, though those lesser titles and dignities are genuinely included among his prerogatives. Likewise, though Christ’s humanity possesses certain perfections that, taken in isolation, would merit no more than hyperdulic worship, we do not actually worship Him with the same veneration we give His Blessed Mother — doing so would effectively deny Him the strictly divine adoration He is also owed, exactly as attributing an adoptive sonship to the man Jesus leads inevitably to denying His natural Sonship.¹² Billuart, then, commits a plain sophism in arguing: “Humanity, considered thus in isolation, can be loved and praised; therefore it can also be adored [namely, with hyperdulia].”¹³ Abstractly considering Christ’s created perfections — admiring, loving, praising them — is simply not the same as actually rendering them hyperdulic worship. Nor can we argue that, had Christ’s richly graced humanity existed as a separate human person apart from the Logos, it would deserve even higher hyperdulic worship than the Blessed Virgin — this is dogmatically inadmissible, since that humanity, with all its perfections, is inseparably united to the Person of the Logos, full stop.

St. Thomas himself seems to allow that we may render Christ dulia alongside latria: “The adoration of Christ’s humanity can be understood two ways: in one way, as directed to it as the thing adored — and in this sense, to adore Christ’s flesh is nothing other than to adore the Incarnate Word of God… In another way, the adoration of Christ’s humanity can be understood as given by reason of that humanity’s own perfection in every grace — and in this sense, the adoration of Christ’s humanity is not the adoration of latria, but of dulia; such that one and the same Person of Christ is adored with the adoration of latria on account of His Divinity, and with the adoration of dulia on account of the perfection of His humanity.”¹⁴ This passage has been read variously. Franzelin takes St. Thomas to mean that Christ’s sacred humanity is simply the obiectum manifestativum through which the one worship we may give Him — latria — is expressed.¹⁵ Christian Pesch holds that, in St. Thomas’s view, latria virtually includes dulia and hyperdulia, but that permitting the greater does not license the lesser as a separate act.¹⁶ Both readings, though, seem strained. Medina, Billuart, L. Janssens, and others read the passage at face value — meaning that, for once, we find ourselves compelled, with all due reverence, to depart from what St. Thomas appears, on the surface, to actually teach. There is a special reason for taking a different view today than Aquinas did: despite the countless hyperdulic excellences proper to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Church now regards the worship paid to this particular organ of Christ’s human body as latria, and latria alone.

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