You can read today’s Gospel at the USCCB website.
Peter, I get it. Discouragement is a disease that can spread through the mind so quickly. Too numerous are the times my spirit has slumped over with dejection; emotional exhaustion, financial stress, providing executive functioning for kids while it shrinks to minuscule proportions, and then on top of it all, when I go to serve my family, a tool I need bites the dust. It feels like it’s never enough.
no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands for my sake and for the sake of the gospel…
The times I’ve read this and have just so wanted to read it literally... If I gave up all my responsibilities, maybe then…? But I feel inauthentic entertaining such a thought; I know it’s not the meaning of the passage. For those of us who have others under our care and responsibility, our freedom to give it all up as represented in this passage is limited.
So how are we to understand this type of giving up of everything? It’s just this: a radical acceptance of where we are in life, taking every moment where we become dejected in our spirit and making it a prayer and an offering to God in that moment. Learning the discipline and practice of being content with what we have is a remarkable path of holiness; both Therese de Lisieux and Faustina testify to this.
Not only this, but each time we can call on the name of the Lord in our distress, it becomes a part of our own offering we bring each week to Mass. This is no small thing! The Sacrifice of the Mass - a powerful anemnesis where Christ’s Offering of himself as the sacrificial lamb as atonement for our sins is made present again for us.
But for us to…what, exactly?
It is more than just for us to adore him in the transubstantiated bread and wine, which remains altogether excellent.
In being baptised and confirmed, we’ve entered into his sonship with the Father. We have put on Christ. And in the eucharistic liturgy, we offer our own spiritual sacrifices on the altar to be joined in union with his Sacrifice. Offered with his in atonement for our sins. We know that he is our High Priest and remains eternally at the right hand of the Father for exactly this purpose - he never relinquishes his priesthood.
Further, we know that the Temple in Jerusalem is long gone, but through the Spirit’s sanctifying work we have been made into that Temple where the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies abides, and our High Priest has sprinkled his blood of Sacrifice upon the kapporeth, cleansing and making pure our offerings to the Father in the Temple through his own. What opportunity have we to make use of this divine gift!
Priest: The lord be with you.
Faithful: And with your spirit.
Priest: Lift up your hearts.
Faithful: We lift them up to the Lord.
Priest: Let us give thanks to the lord our God.
Faithful: It is right and just.
We can be overwhelmed when our chronic conditions lead us to question whether it will ever be enough. And every time this happens we have a chance to exercise our priestly faculty by virtue of our baptism and offer our own bloodless sacrifice to the Father. This culminates in our offering them all at Mass communally with the whole of his Body.
I’ve given up a lot to be where I am in my state of life. Whether it seems like it’s enough or not, I can choose that radical acceptance and invite the Spirit to pray in me as I offer my pains to the Father in Christ’s name. I invite you to do it, too:
Through him, and with him, and in him,
O God, almighty Father,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
all glory and honor is yours,
for ever and ever.
Amen.
Well and beautifully said! Thank you!!