Our offering attitude

Fr. Roy  Cimagala

THIS is the fundamental and indispensable attidue all of us ought to have. It corresponds to the reality that we are God’s creatures, created in his image and likeness, made children of his through his grace, and meant to live our whole life with him.

Absent this attitude, we would be living our life wrongly.

We would undermine our own nature, our own freedom, peace and joy. We would be at the mercy of improper forces that may give us temporary advantages but will surely destroy us in the end.

By offering ourselves to God, we would meet the most basic requirement of our human dignity as persons and children of God.

Otherwise, we detach ourselves from the very source of life and of everything that is proper to us. We would stupidly dare to live our life by our own selves, relying simply on our own powers as if these powers did not come from God himself that ought to be used according to his will and laws.

We need to strengthen this offering attitude. It would be good if right at the beginning of the day, as we wake up, the first thing that we do is to offer our whole life, our whole day to God, renewing this offering every so often during the day.

This is the simple language of love. God, who is love, made us in love and for love. He expects us to repay his love for us with our love for him.

This offering attitude now assumes the character of sacrifice, because it has to contend with the consequences of sin. It now involves an element of pain and self-denial, where originally it came as pure delight.

That’s why, since the fall of our first parents, God has been tutoring us, all throughout the history of mankind, to learn the language of sacrifice.

From Abel and Cain, to Noah, down to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and to the prophets and other holy men and women, this divine pedagogy on offering sacrifices has been done step by step.

First, they—we—were asked to offer some burnt offerings out of the fruits of the earth and of our labor. Thus, plants and animals were burned as offerings.

Then some laws were given for us to be able to give God not only things but also an integral part of us, if not our mind and heart. These divine commandments are a way to form our minds and hearts to receive a greater gift.

Then came the perfect sacrifice, the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. This makes our loving and self-giving most pleasing to God, since it is done for us and with us by Christ himself, the Son of God who became man.

On this point, the Letter to the Hebrews has these relevant words attributed to Christ, addressed to his Father, to describe how his sacrifice supersedes the previous forms of sacrifice:

“Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me. In burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, Lo, I have come to do your will, O God.” (10,8-9)

And this economy of sacrifice continues to work up to now. Christ’s sacrifice invites, not exempts, all of us to participate, as can be gleaned from the words of St. Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians:

“We always bear about in our body the mortification of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our bodies.” (4,10)

There’s no doubt that in the Christian understanding of the meaning of our life, the spirit of sacrifice plays a central role.

Sacrifice is not only an ingredient, much less a seasoning in our life. It has to be the very essence of our life.

This spirit of sacrifice meets all the requirements of love, for which we have been created. We have to learn how to develop that spirit in our day-to-day affairs.

In fact, nothing should be done without this spirit of sacrifice permeating it. We have to check if indeed our every deed is primarily motivated by this spirit of sacrifice.

Otherwise, we can go through life on the wrong footing, badly if not fatally handicapped. This spirit of sacrifice keeps us always in the frontiers of love, avoiding complacency and lukewarmness that has been described as the tomb of love.

We are supposed to offer our whole life as a sacrifice by uniting it to Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross made available to us through the Holy Mass.

E-mail: roycimagala@gmail.com