are chosen and set aside, thereby becoming
consecrated, religious. We should respect them in a spiritual way as we
respect in a human way all that belongs to those whom we hold dear.
Irreverence or disrespect is a profanation, a sacrilege.

CHAPTER XXXII.
DEVOTIONS.

THERE is in the Church an abundance and a rich variety of what we call
devotions--practices that express our respect, affection and veneration
for the chosen friends of God. These devotions we should be careful not
to confound with a thing very differently known as devotion--to God
Himself. This latter is the soul, the very essence of religion; the
former are sometimes irreverently spoken of as "frills."

Objectively speaking, these devotions find their justification in the
dogma of the Communion of Saints, according to which we believe that
the blessed in heaven are able and disposed to help the unfortunate
here below. Subjectively they are based on human nature itself. In our
self-conscious weakness and unworthiness, we choose instinctively to
approach the throne of God through His tried and faithful friends
rather than to hazard ourselves alone and helpless in His presence.

Devotion, as all know, is only another name for charity towards God,
piety, holiness, that is, a condition of soul resulting from, and at
the same time, conducive to, fidelity to God's law and the dictates of
one's conscience. It consists in a proper understanding of our
relations to God--creatures of the Creator, paupers, sinners and
children in the presence of a Benefactor, Judge and Father; and in
sympathies and sentiments aroused in us by, and corresponding with,
these convictions. In other words, one is devoted to a friend when one
knows him well, is true as steel to him, and basks in the sunshine of a
love that requites that fidelity. Towards God, this is devotion.

Devotions differ in pertaining, not directly, but indirectly through
the creature to God. No one but sees at once that devotion, in a
certain degree is binding upon all men; a positive want of it is
nothing short of impiety. But devotions have not the dignity of
entering into the essence of God-worship. They are not constituent
parts of that flower that grows in God's garden of the soul--charity;
they are rather the scent and fragrance that linger around its petals
and betoken its genuine quality. They are of counsel, so to speak, as
opposed to the precept of charity and devotion. They are outside all
com