ADORATION, from the Lat. adoratio, expresses that internal religious response which externalizes itself in those actions denoted by adorare: “to pray,” “entreat,” “worship,” “pay homage to.”

The term does not ordinarily appear in Eng. tr. of the Bible, and is more used in Roman Catholic than in Protestant religious expression. Roman Catholics render homage (which excludes adoration) to the saints, their relics and images, and render adoration to such things as have close reference to the divine and, accordingly, regard the cross as a proper object of adoration. In the strict sense, however, Roman Catholics, as do Protestants, regard adoration as exclusively reserved for God.

In its widest sense, adoration is simply the appreciative wonderment of the perfections and excellencies of the Creator as reflected in created realities, and the term is commonly used to express the awe which such reflections of the divine glory elicit in the human spirit. A man may adore a woman, a woman a man, and both the wonders of created realities. In this wide coverage, adoration does not ordinarily issue in prayer or worship; when it does, man’s natural sense of awe and adoration becomes idolatrous.

In its narrower religious sense adoration may be rendered to God only, for He alone is the proper object of homage, prayer, and worship. Although adoration is a Lat. and neither a Gr. nor Heb. Biblical word, its religious use is legitimate, for it expresses what the Bible means by worship, prayer, prostration, and the lifting up of hands to God. Both Roman Catholics and Protestants regard adoration as an equivalent of the NT Gr. proskynesis (prostration).

Adoration in this distinctively religious sense is the human response to God’s disclosure of Himself in Jesus Christ as the God who, by His free act of grace, is in all His majestic love and power the God who is for mankind. This human response is a total response of the whole man without remainder. In adoration the intellect perceives and registers the love and grace of God revealed in Jesus Christ for sinful man. The will ratifies what the intellect perceives, thus commending it and declaring its Amen, that is, that it would have God be what He is in Jesus Christ. The affections of man are stirred to the limits of their intensity and respond with an unearthly delight, an unspeakable joy, and a peace that surpasses both man’s understanding and his powers to articulate. Adoration is the effort of the total man to give total expression to his joyful comprehension and approbation of his vision of God in Jesus Christ. Since his response to this vision never adequately expresses that peace and joy which passes his understanding, he reaches for the liturgical aids of song, music, and symbol.

If adoration is that total response of man to God in which man acknowledges that power and glory, love and grace truly and infinitely belong to God only, and that God alone is worthy of all adoration and worship, may such adoration be rendered to Christ who is as truly human as He is divine?

The NT Church, according to the NT, rendered to Christ after His Ascension the same adoration that it rendered to God. This is clear from the history of the primitive church recorded in the Acts. Revelation ascribes both to Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, blessing and honor, glory and dominion, for ever and ever (see Rev 5:13).