Faith

Adam and Eve are depicted in a stained-glass window at St. Nicolas Church in Feldkirch, Austria. CNS photo from Crosiers

Make everything a sacrifice to sanctify the world

Wednesday, October 2, 2024Faith

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When things are offered to God, they reach their true goal, but when we turn them toward us, we throw a monkey wrench into the right working of the universe -- and our souls.

"Make everything you can a sacrifice."
-- The Angel of Portugal to the three Fatima children

Sacrifice stands before us as the hidden key to life. The word itself may sound frightening, conjuring images of blood, destruction and perhaps an overly demanding God who wants us to give up the things we enjoy. Nonetheless, it points us to our true vocation -- "to make holy." The entire cosmos was created for sacrifice -- to be made holy -- and God has placed us within it to ensure this happens. The universe exists to glorify God as a temple to his honor, and he has established human beings as priests to order all things to him within it.

God left the work of creation intentionally incomplete, placing it into the hands of man and woman as his stewards who must bring the world to its perfection. Adam was tasked with working within the Garden, cultivating it and directing it to the glory of God. Adam's work is meant to become a priestly sacrifice, making the world holy -- a place that honors God as his temple by ordering all things rightly and offering them to God in sacrifice. In transgressing God's commandment, he set aside this task, following his wife, Eve, in diverting things from their proper end to his own enjoyment. This is the whole problem of sin -- to revert the order of things from God's glory to our own. When things are offered to God, they reach their true goal, but when we turn them toward us, we throw a monkey wrench into the right working of the universe -- and our souls.

If God created us for sacrifice, Jesus is the one who clearly models how to exercise this vocation. In our slavery to sin, he presented himself as the Lamb of God offered in atonement, bringing about a restoration of freedom and life. He lived only for the Father, even to the point of death. Without sin, he did not have to die, but he willingly gave himself in obedience to set right Adam's disobedience. His perfect sacrifice righted the order of the entire universe, directing it back to the Father and restoring humanity's call to offer it to God.

We often think of the Cross as what Jesus did for us so that we didn't have to do it. Simon of Cyrene, however, reminds us that we are invited to accept the yoke of Christ and join him in the great sacrifice. St. Paul points out how Jesus' sacrifice must become ours as well: "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Gal 2:20). Jesus offered his sacrifice to draw all things to him (Jn 12:32) and through him to the Father. In the Mass, as we offer Jesus to the Father, we, too, become the sacrifice because we are joined to it as members of his Body.

Jesus is the one who made his entire life a sacrifice -- all his thoughts, words and actions, all flowing from and to the Father -- and we, too, should make everything we can a sacrifice, including all the little details of our day. God taught the Israelites this in preparing for the perfect sacrifice. Adam had fallen by eating, so Israel had to offer its food to God: animals, grains and drink. Jesus pulls us out of our fallen desires, not simply by turning us away from food, but by feeding us, filling us with his divine life. By coming to us and nourishing us from within, he restores order within us, enabling us to take up our lost mission again. His sacrifice becomes more and more our own as it reaches out into all aspects of our lives.

If we share in Christ's sacrifice and receive the gift of his life within us, we can then begin to rightly order things around us, making them into a sacrifice as well. This may entail giving something up if it can't be rightly ordered to God, because if it doesn't honor him, it doesn't belong in our lives. But even the things we don't give up should become a means of praising God, lifting them up to him as little acts of love. Sacrifice becomes all-encompassing as every little act becomes a gift we offer back to God -- our work, home life, relationships, leisure and prayer. The sacrifice of Christ, which we receive in Communion, begins to permeate our lives like leaven, enabling us to lift everything up to God in thanksgiving, praise and reparation.

The sacrifice of our lives culminates in the hardest thing to sacrifice, and yet the most important for shaping us: our free will. We fear giving it up, but looking to the Cross, we must trust that surrendering everything will lead us to the fullness of life. Just as Jesus opened his arms without holding anything back, we, too, must receive everything that the Father sends us as a gift and offer it all back to him as a gift in obedience and love. Following Jesus in making our lives a complete sacrifice opens the path of holiness in our daily lives. Everything, when made into a sacrifice, becomes a means of drawing closer to God and, at the same, sanctifying the world around us so that it can glorify God.