Exterior Acts of Religion: Sacrifice

The offering of sacrifice to God is an obligation laid on man by the natural law. Reason requires that man show signs of submission to God, as well as signs of honor paid to God. Now, man is a bodily being in a bodily world; it is reasonable that he should make the necessary signs of religion in a bodily way, using bodily things. This is done by offering sacrifice. Thewhole history of mankind shows that the offering of sacrifice is a universal practice. This fact confirms the truth mentioned, namely,that sacrifice to God is required of man by the natural law.

Sacrifice is the highest and most solemn and impressive of the acts of latria. As an official act of religion and external divine worship, it is defined as follows: sacrifice is the offering of a bodily thing (called victim), by a qualified person(called priest), in a suitable place (called altar), and the destruction or change of the victim (thisis immolation or mactation) to express the supreme and unique dominion of God over all his creatures, and the absolute dependence of all creatures upon God.

Sacrifice is a special act done out of reverence for God; it therefore belongs to the virtue of religion. Sometimes acts of the other virtues are called by the name of sacrifices; thus we say that a person makes a sacrifice of time or money, or that he is a self-sacrificing person, or that he sacrifices the use of certain foods or pleasures as penance, and soon; and we say that a soldier who dies in battle makes the supreme sacrifice. Now, such things are not actually or formally sacrifices, but they are called so because they are a sort of offering that is, or should be, made to God; they have a resemblance, either striking or distant, to sacrifice, and thus they are given its name.

Using the name sacrifice in this extended meaning, we are all bound to offer to God the inward sacrifice of a devout mind, and to perform requisite acts of virtue in the spirit of sacrifice, thatis, out of high reverence for God.