§ 1. On the First Three Acts

I. Actual devotion is a certain will of promptly handing oneself over to those things which pertain to the service of God. It is acquired by prayers and by consideration or contemplation of the divine perfections and of one's own defect. Per se and principally, it brings spiritual joy, as the fruit of the considered divine goodness and of the promise of aid; accidentally, however, and consequently, it brings sorrow according to God, from consideration of one's own misery and of the absence of the vision of God. Cf. 2, 2, q. 82.

II. Adoration, taken strictly, is the formal exhibition of supreme reverence and the protestation of subjection, in recognition of the infinite excellence and supreme dominion of God. By a broader usage, it is extended to the very veneration which belongs to creatures.

Taken adequately, it comprises, besides interior veneration (through internal adoration), exterior humiliation of the body (through external adoration); the latter aids the interior; from man's composite nature, as it were spontaneously, it accompanies the former, and from the necessity of social worship it is sometimes prescribed.

III. Praise is prayer making clear the greatness of virtue insofar as it shines forth in effects, and especially in benefits.

Hence it is said to differ from honor, because we honor all the good, but we praise benefactors. Therefore it pertains to the office of gratitude which must be rendered to God. Cf. Aristotle, Rhet. I and 3; St. Thomas on Ps. 17.

The power of God shines forth in all visible nature; but in no creature more than in the heroic life of the saints.

Praise of the mouth is a part of external worship. For stirring up affections, chant agrees with it especially well, and is therefore most suitably instituted, "that the souls of the weak might be more provoked to devotion" (2, 2, q. 91, art. 2).