(dedication, consecration).
The Christian must dedicate to the Lord all his possessions, and every minute of his life, with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his mind and with all his strength, Mar 10:21, Mar 12:30.
Christian Bible Dictionary
Dr. J. Dominguez
http://bible.com/dictionary/
Source: Christian Bible Dictionary
Attitude of welcome and dedication, of affection and dedication, of interest and preference for a person, place, ideal or behavior. Religiously Sto. Thomas Aquinas defines it in the Summa Theologica as “the readiness of the will to surrender to things that look at divine service” (II-II. q. 82. a.1).
Its object can be God himself and his envoy Jesus Christ, and then devotion is adoration. And they can also be sacramental actions, pious practices, saints, shrines and everything that directs the mind and will towards God.
Devotion has a basis in faith, which is supported by intelligence. If you don’t believe in something or someone you can’t have dedication, devotion, to it. But it affects feelings, preferences, ecclesial relationships and the concrete actions that devotion inspires in people. But faith is not devotion, but the engine that promotes, guides and maintains it.
As an expression of religiosity, it must be the object of an adequate education, always aimed at discerning what is true dedication to divine things or people and what are customs and superficial actions that can border on mere superstition.
An affective pietism is so negative, that it frequently disorients true religiosity, like an excessive coldness, which distances itself from all external manifestation.
Among the preferred devotions are those whose center is Jesus Christ, God and men, naturally. But the perspectives of that devotion can be multiple: Crucifix, Eucharist, Sacred Heart, Childhood, etc.
Special devotion has always inspired in Christians the devotion to Mary the Mother of God, which has also taken many forms: Immaculate, Royalty, Maternity, Rosary and thousands of invocations products of that preference.
Certain saints related to the community or environment, in addition to the martyrs and the apostles, some traditional prayers, places, dates, emblems, groups of religious significance are the various platforms that awaken memories and feelings of devotion worthy of all consideration and necessary objects of an adequate pious formation.
Pedro Chico González, Dictionary of Catechesis and Religious Pedagogy, Editorial Bruño, Lima, Peru 2006
Source: Dictionary of Catechesis and Religious Pedagogy
The term “devotion” has had various meanings over the centuries. From the Latin root voveo, devoveo, it expresses in classical Latin the attitude of consecration, oblation, sacrifice, with which homage is offered to the divinity to make it propitious. In ancient Christian literature the term can be compared with other words that recall divine service and worship. In primitive liturgical use, devotion indicates a part or an act of worship, or else – in Roman euchological compositions – a particular attitude of oblation, respect, and attention that accompanies divine worship. This meaning still stands in the liturgical compositions that have inherited the language of the golden age of the Roman Rite. In a more precise sense, it means a particular consecration of the person to divine worship or to the monastic life, or, with a more global meaning, the permanent dispositions of service done to God, of convinced and generous dedication to the fulfillment of his will, even the fervent and total submission to the law of God, in imitation of the devotion of slaves and soldiers to their owner or to the emperor. These meanings are found in early Christian authors, from Lactantius to Ambrose and Augustine.
The Middle Ages develop the global sense of devotion, indicating in it the set of all virtuous exercises, the fervor of charity, the affection that is born from the meditation of the mysteries of God; it has especially as its object the mysteries of the humanity of Christ, to which the Cistercian and Franciscan piety of the Middle Ages, not deprived of sensitive aspects of compassion, tears, enthusiasms and other experiences that induce speech, is addressed with increasing pleasure. later of a sensitive devotion. Finally, it is synonymous with spirituality or spiritual life as a whole; this meaning is the one that is found in the expression of the new spirituality that appears at the end of the Middle Ages and that takes the name of modern devotio. In the meantime, a very concrete and new meaning developed, that is, that of a particular attitude of attention and veneration towards each one of the mysteries of the Lord, of the Virgin and of the saints, with the respective practices of popular piety.
It is then about “devotions” and their cultic expressions. Around the concept of devotion, Saint Thomas Aquinas developed a very rich and concrete theology (S. Th. 11-11, q. 82). He exhaustively deals with this theme in the field of the virtue of religion and presents it as a special act of the will (a. 1) and a specific action of the virtue of religion, through which man surrenders to God to dedicate himself to some works of divine worship (a. 2). The angelic doctor distinguishes two causes of devotion: one main, which is the action of God; the other secondary, which can be, on the part of man, the effort of surrender to God. In this context he offers a definition of devotion in these words; ((It is an act of the will that has as its objective that the person gives himself promptly to the service of God “(a. 3). Devotion supposes the consideration of the goodness of God and his benefits and the consciousness of poverty of man. Indeed, it is the goods of God and the manifestation of his love, like the consideration of the holy humanity of Christ, that arouse love and devotion. From a more psychological point of view, Saint Thomas insists on the sensible spiritual joy as one of the effects of devotion, with a joy that is sometimes mixed with tears and compunction, without engendering spiritual sadness (A. 4).In the synthesis of Saint Thomas we have, therefore, the description essential part of devotion as a movement of grace that facilitates self-giving, dedication to the works of divine worship and – particularly to some pious exercises – with an eye turned in a special way to the consideration of the mysteries and benefits divine.
In the field of spiritual and moral theology, the pedagogical accent is placed on obligatory devotion, on attention, on the interior dedication with which all acts that belong to divine worship, both public and private, must be fulfilled, as The old liturgical euchology called for it. But sensitive devotion is not a spontaneous, safe and lasting feeling. A certain sensitive devotion can be the temporary gift with which God gratifies people who undertake the spiritual life at the beginning of their conversion, to favor their first steps; but sensitive devotion may disappear and give way to aridity.
This situation, the lack of devotion and consolation, should not be interpreted – as the Messalians wanted – as a sign that the Spirit has abandoned the soul; On the contrary, it can be a sign of growth in the spiritual life, of a test that requires a more generous and decisive response, less interested and selfish. In any case, between the sensitive devotion and the aridity that insinuates itself in the exercise of the spiritual life, there is the right mean of devotion, in the sense of convinced and prompt dedication, with which the Lord must always be served.
In another sense, devotion can mean both the religious feeling towards the divine persons and towards the mystery of Christ, towards the Virgin Mary in her mysteries or in her various invocations, towards saints, persons or sacred places. This attitude takes the form of devotional acts that can be included in the liturgy or, more generally, are carried out through acts of popular piety and pious exercises.
For devotions, the same orientations apply that the Church offers for pious exercises: they must tend to the center of the mystery of salvation celebrated in the liturgy and must derive from it (5C 13).
J Castilian
Bibl.: C. Castro Cubells, The religious sense of the liturgy, Guadarrama, Madrid 1964; L. Maldonado, liturgical initiation: theology, spirituality, pedagogy, Marova, Madrid 1981; R. í lvarez Gastón, The religion of the people: defense of its values, BAC, Madrid 1976; A. Hamman, The Prayer, Herder, Barcelona 1967, 627ff.
PACOMIO, Luciano, Encyclopedic Theological Dictionary, Divine Word, Navarra, 1995
Source: Encyclopedic Theological Dictionary