The virtue of religion is a virtue by which we give honor and service
due to God as our Creator, Master and Supreme Lord. It is related to
the virtue of justice in which we pay what is due to God through our
worship of Him, as well as in other acts of religion. As such, we are
all obliged to practice the virtue of religion. It is through the virtue
of religion that we are able to obtain the purpose for which we were
created, which is to know, to love and to serve God in this life, in
order to be happy with Him eternally in the next life.
Our participation at Sunday Mass is the highest act of religion we
can perform. There are many other acts of religion we perform as well.
These acts come in the form of things like genuflecting before the
Blessed Sacrament, kneeling for prayer, crossing ourselves with holy
water and observing holy silence in the presence of our Eucharistic
Lord. These are external signs by which we not only give glory to God,
but by which we obtain for ourselves grace in proportion to the
sincerity and devoutness that we perform these acts.
It is through our exterior actions that God allows us to orient our interior dispositions toward heavenly things, so that we can be more receptive to receiving grace, whether it is sanctifying grace from the sacraments, or the actual grace we receive apart from the sacraments. These graces help us to develop a greater intimacy with God. It is an intimacy which the Church calls devotion, and which St Pius XII calls “the principal act of the virtue of religion” (Encyclical Mediator Dei).