What the month of July means to Catholics and how to honour it in your home
In July we honour the Precious Blood of Jesus, July, occurring between June’s devotion to the Sacred Heart and August’s devotion to the Immaculate Heart, July is a perfect time to connect our devotion to Jesus and Mary into a deeper acknowledgement of the bond they share and also to reinforce our connection to the blood of the Lamb of God.
The Pieties
10 ways we may honour the precious blood of Jesus in our homes during July;
- Pray the Fatima morning offering
- Spend some time in eucharistic adoration
- Receive communion … And not just on Sundays
- Pray the divine mercy chaplet regularly this month
- Invoke St. Longinus in prayer
- Decorate the house in honour of the month’s devotion
- Lead your family in prayer to the precious blood
- Pray the litany of the most precious blood of Jesus
- Give the gift of the chaplet of the precious blood of Jesus
- Perform a deed of sacrificial love or an act of mercy
When we perform a deed of sacrificial love or mercy, we seek to imitate Jesus, For example, to give our time talent or material resources to those in need. This is never an easy thing to do, offer it up. Encourage your children to do likewise.
Overview of the Readings and observances in July.
Technical terminology
Eucharistic adoration is termed Latria
Latria
Latria or latreia (also known as latreutical worship) is a theological term (Latin Latrīa, from the Greek λατρεία, latreia) used in Catholic theology to mean adoration, a reverence directed only to the Holy Trinity. Latria carries an emphasis on the internal form of worship, rather than external ceremonies.
Latria also applies to the Eucharist and Eucharistic adoration. In the 16th century, the Council of Trent made specific affirmations of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the theological basis for Eucharistic adoration and stated:[3]
“The only-begotten Son of God is to be adored in the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist with the worship of “latria”, including external worship.
Latria vs. dulia and hyperdulia
Latria is sacrificial in character and may be offered to God alone. Catholic and Orthodox Christians offer other degrees of reverence to the Blessed Virgin Mary and to the Saints; these non-sacrificial types of reverence are called hyperdulia and dulia, respectively. In English, dulia is also called veneration. Hyperdulia is essentially a heightened degree of dulia provided only to the Blessed Virgin.
This distinction, written about as early as Augustine of Hippo and St Jerome, was detailed more explicitly by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae, A.D. 1270:
“Reverence is due to God on account of His Excellence, which is communicated to certain creatures not in equal measure, but according to a measure of proportion; and so, the reverence which we pay to God, and which belongs to latria, differs from the reverence which we pay to certain excellent creatures; this belongs to dulia, and we shall speak of it further on (103)”
In this next article St. Thomas Aquinas writes:
“Wherefore dulia, which pays due service to a human lord, is a distinct virtue from latria, which pays due service to the Lordship of God. It is, moreover, a species of observance, because by observance we honour all those who excel in dignity, while dulia properly speaking is the reverence of servants for their master, dulia being the Greek for servitude”.
Source Latria – Wikipedia
Image 2 By LaRedCultural – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19640046