Tag: Saint Paul

The Gift of Sacrifice

This is God’s gift to us. The opportunity to unite our sufferings, our frustrations, our inconveniences, to His in Love. Throughout our lives as Children of God, we are offered an infinite number of “rungs” which to climb upon the ladder of the Cross. When taken in love, the result is beautiful, both in Heaven and on earth.

“Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).

We speak often of the gift of redemption that Christ offers us via His death on the cross. But through His Passion and death, He gives us another gift as well. One that we often overlook. He offersSabatini_santi crucifixion us an opportunity to experience first-hand that “greater love” of which He speaks. Not through His sacrifice. But through our own.

Of all the imaginable plans for redemption that one could have conceived, it seems the one God chose is most peculiar. After all, His only Son didn’t come into the public realm until His 30th year, he surrounded Himself with devoted friends, walked with them, talked with them, and confided in them over the course of three years, only to allow leaders of the day to mock Him, scourge Him, strip Him of His dignity, nail Him to a cross in a most humiliating way and leave Him to hang for three hours until he breathed his last.

What about that makes sense? As a Protestant, I must admit I didn’t ask very many questions. I just accepted that He died, so I didn’t have to.

But after spending some time contemplating the cross, I began to think I wasn’t seeing the whole picture. I began asking. Thankfully, our Faith offers answers. And they are more profound and beautiful than I could have ever imagined.

My greatest question had to do with His manner of death. We understand that Christ redeemed us from the absolute misery and degradation of sin. But why in this way – through a humiliatingly public and  torturous death which reached its climax atop a mountain, upon a crude and rugged cross?

Why did Christ have to make redemption such a profound and gruesome process?

Most likely His goal was to give us an example to follow:

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another (John 13:34-35).

With those six little words, “even as I have loved you,” Christ gives us everything.

By virtue of His cross, Christ re-opened the gates of heaven. Gates that had been closed for thousands of years as a consequence of the first sin. He demonstrated for us the power of that cross. And He calls us to follow his example:

“If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:24-25),

This is that narrow gate about which we hear so often (Matthew 7:13).

Love is not a a pile of sentimental poems or a confetti of rose petals streaming from the heavens.

In reality, love looks a lot like suffering. It can be painful. It can be heart wrenching.

Indeed, love is a sacrifice.

A sacrifice first wrought by Christ, who came to show us The Way.

According to Pope Benedict XVI in Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week,

He has truly gone right to the end, to the very limit and even beyond that limit. He has accomplished the utter fullness of love – he has given himself.

First Christ defined love.

And then He asked us to practice it.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22: 36-39).

For God, love = sacrifice.

And what is a sacrifice, but suffering, wrapped in a beautiful package and offered as pure gift?

Through our participation in the Body of Christ, we have the opportunity to unite our suffering with His, as we truly are One Body – this is not mere concept and symbolism. Rather, the very gift of Self that Christ has given us is the grace that helps us to love as He has loved. As Paul explains, through our participation in The Body, we have the privilege of participating in redemption:

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church….(Colossians 1:24)

Paul  bids us to offer ourselves as well, to worship God through our own participation in this new concept of sacrifice that Jesus has introduced by the cross:

I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present you bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.(Romans 12:1).

Benedict XVI expounds on this concept of sacrifice:

…it means the offering of one’s whole existence that must be penetrated by the word and must become a gift to God. Paul, who places so much emphasis on the impossibility of justification on the basis of one’s own morality, is doubtless presupposing that this new form of Christian worship, in which Christians themselves are the “living and holy sacrifice”, is possible only through sharing in the incarnate love of Jesus Christ, a love that conquers all our insufficiency through the power of his holiness…

…the greatness of Christ’s love is revealed precisely in the fact that he takes us up into himself in all our wretchedness, into his living and holy sacrifice, so that we truly become “his body.”

Later, he concludes,

In living out the Gospel and in suffering for it, the Church, under the guidance of the apostolic preaching has learned to understand the mystery of the Cross more and more, even though ultimately it is a mystery that defies analysis in terms of our rational formulae. The darkness and irrationality of sin and the holiness of God, too dazzling for our eyes, come together in the Cross, transcending our power of understanding. And yet in the message of the New Testament, and in the proof of that message in the lives of the saints, the great mystery has become radiant light.

This is God’s gift to us. The opportunity to unite our sufferings, our frustrations, our inconveniences, to His in Love. For the good of ourselves; for the good of the body of Christ, that is, the Church.

Throughout our lives as Children of God, we are offered an infinite number of “rungs” upon which to climb as we progress up the ladder of the Cross. When we ascend in love, the result is beautiful, both in Heaven and on earth.

When you look at a crucifix today, thank God for the gift of sacrifice.

And ask for the grace to answer His call.

Pelican’s Breast – A Symbol of Sacrifice

There is a great need for sacrifice in our world. Rather than look to God merely for His glory, we must seek Him in His suffering and degradation.

Perhaps you’re wondering why anyone would choose Pelican’s Breast for a blog name? It’s certainly not top on the list of popular domain names, that’s for sure. But when I contemplated a discussion on sacrifice, it became clear that Pelican’s Breast was the way to go.

Throughout history, the pelican has been a great symbol of sacrifice. According to ancient legend, a mother pelican would pierce her own breast in times of famine, that her children might seek sustenance from her very flesh and blood. When necessary, the mother pelican was said to have readily offered this sacrifice at the cost of her own life. Pelican's Breast Image

Over time, for obvious reasons, the pelican came to symbolize Christ, who gives us his very flesh and blood, that we might have eternal life. You may have even noticed carvings or stained glass windows of the mother pelican and her young in your local church, as a symbol of Christ in the Eucharist, but also as a symbol of sacrifice for us to model.

Unfortunately, just as the story of Christ’s actual sacrifice is heralded less and less, in most places today we hear little of the legend of the pelican. Sacrifice is something not often promoted today. At least, not in close quarters. We’d rather have the resurrection without the cross. But sadly, without the cross, there can be no resurrection. For Christ Himself said,

If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.  -Matthew 16:24-25.

Christ calls us to sacrifice. He isn’t just calling for us to “suffer” with him because misery loves company. Rather, in His infinite wisdom, He knows that in this world so lovingly created for us, our joy will directly correspond to our ability to keep our eyes on the ball, so to speak. He knows that our willingness to sacrifice in this life will not only prepare us for heaven, but will make for a much more fulfilling time on earth. In our day, we are experiencing the antithesis of this. We are seeing the results of a refusal to sacrifice. We are witnessing daily the results of the culture of ME. And most of us would agree that they are not pretty.

There is a great need for sacrifice in our world. Rather than look to God merely for His glory, we must seek Him in His suffering and degradation. We must follow Saint Paul and

…rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. – Romans 5:3-5

When we turn suffering, annoyances or obligations into gifts of love, they become sacrifices. When we give – whether our time, treasure, desires or our very selves – we are offering sacrifices. And we are in great need of sacrifice today.

Back to the symbol of the pelican. Our own children are starving. Worse than starving from physical depravation, they are suffering from great emotional and spiritual deprivation. Many are missing the very foundation of childhood that stems from the security of family. They are raised in a culture that values the material over the spiritual, relativism over truth, personal choice over life and pleasure and self-determination over commitment.

Starvation from love and truth are exponentially more destructive than starvation from food:

And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. – Matthew 10:28

For the sake of our souls and for those of our children, we must begin to embrace the notion of sacrifice. Take some time this week to contemplate the cross. And if you are so inclined, tune in to the pelicansbreast.com and join our discussion.

In my next post, we’ll begin to discuss sacrifice in practical terms.

 

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