46. What is thanksgiving? .. ........ ........ ....... 59
45. What is adoration?
"You have told me already, Lord; my interior ear has heard a loud voice saying that you are eternal, the only One to possess immortality, because your form does not change nor are you moved. Your will does not alter with the passing of ages; while lacking immortality, a will desires this now, and something else later.
"Then you told me, Lord, with a strong voice in my interior ear, that all existing natures and substances, unlike you, have been made by you. Only `nothing' comes not from you, and the separation of one's will from you who are Being itself, choosing lesser beings. Such separation is a crime. It is a sin.""'
"Then you said to me with a strong interior voice, that even a creature who desires you alone is not eternal as are you. Yet in persevering chastity one draws his strength from you and then, in no way shows himself to be changeable. For you are always present to him and he ever makes you the object of his affection, thus keeping himself (in a permanent present) with no future to look forward to or past to remember, undergoing no change or worldly distraction. 0 blessed is he, if such a one exists, who cleaves to your blessedness. Blessed is he in you, his eternal Inhabitant and Enlightener .....
In these reflections, St. Augustine shows us the way to adore God. Adoration is recognition of God as Creator, and all creatures with intellects and wills (angels and men) are bound to adore God. From this recognition comes the sense for the sacred - that awareness that there is something transcendent upon which we are dependent, something worthy of our veneration. This expresses itself in the virtue of religion - that universal awareness that man has that he is indebted to a Supreme Being. Religion takes the form of adoration and sacrifice. Augustine shows us how our adoration and sacrifice are perfected in Christ: "All of the redeemed city, that is, the assembled community of the saints, offers itself to God as a universal sacrifice by means of the High Priest.""'
The perfect sacrifice is Christ's, perpetuated in the sacrifice of the Eucharist. Our adoration and sacrifice come together and are united to Christ's in the form of eucharistic adoration and communion: "Let no one receive the Eucharist without first adoring it. He not only does not sin by adoring it, he sins in not adoring