Among the rosary chapels in the ambulatory of the Basilica,
the mosaic for the fourth Sorrowful Mystery clearly juxtaposes
Christ carrying his cross with Issac carrying the wood for his own sacrifice.
Would you rather that God tell you personally what you are to sacrifice this Lent?
Sacrifice. Oblation. Expiation. Progressively these words are less familiar, less intelligible, less often heard. Sacrifice; that one we might understand. It is something you give up in order to obtain a different, better thing. We may “sacrifice” desserts in order to obtain a slimmer figure, or “sacrifice” time at home to obtain advancement at work. Such transactional understanding reflects our economic and commercial dispositions, describing a quid pro quo between parties that are otherwise equal, or peers. Sacrifice, then, is the price one pays.
This price-paying takes on added significance when someone other than the one paying receives the benefit, such as the supreme sacrifice our military personnel have made for the freedom and prosperity you and I enjoy. Sacrifice can kill you. Yet even that undeniable sacrifice does not carry the full weight of the term that we use in the context of our actions before God.
Expanding our vision to include not only our peers and equals, but also our creator God, sacrifice is what we owe and offer to God because He is God, not because He will owe or grant us anything in return. It is right to offer sacrifice to God as a sign of adoration and gratitude, supplication and communion. Catechism of the Catholic Church No. 2099. As St. Augustine observed, Every action is a true sacrifice that is done so as to cling to God in communion of holiness, and thus achieve blessedness. This clinging to God changes us as we enter the communion of holiness; and we participate in blessedness, which equates both to happiness and to holiness.
Abram’s sacrifice of Genesis 15 illustrates this clinging to God, Who, desiring to form His own special people among all the idolatrous nations, chose Abram for its head and called him by this name, which means father of many nations. When Abram bemoaned his childlessness, he responded to God’s instructions and brought (God) all these (a heifer three years old, a she-goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon), cut them in two, and laid each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. … When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, "To your descendants I give this land…”
But the clinging to God is taken to its height in Genesis 22, when God commands the re-named Abraham to sacrifice his late-obtained and only son, Isaac. When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. Then Abraham put forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said, "Here am I." He said, "Do not lay your hand on the lad or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me."
As explained to us in Hebrews 11, By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance; ... By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was ready to offer up his only son, … He considered that God was able to raise men even from the dead; hence he did receive him back, and this was a symbol.
The sacrifice of Abraham points directly to the sacrifice of the only begotten Son of God, Jesus, which is transactional in the sense that it obtains at the expense of His own life, life and freedom for someone else (you and me). More than that, Jesus clings to God in doing His Father’s will.
Jesus’ offering the sacrifice specified by the Father, His obedience in offering Himself, should make us wonder, what is the sacrifice that God asks of us? The short answer is, that very sacrifice: nothing more nor less than the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross. Will it kill us?
Do not tremble in fear. Because we are bound into Christ’s body by Baptism, we do offer this very sacrifice when we participate and partake sacramentally in the mystery of the Holy Eucharist, the sacrifice of the Mass, both offering and receiving Jesus’ self-offering in our Communion. This relieves us of the need to offer ourselves in bloody sacrifice, yet at the same time it bestows on us the ability and obligation to bind our own, lesser sacrifices into His one effective sacrifice. Amidst our daily actions, we cling to God in communion of holiness.
Calling to mind Abraham and all our forebears in faith, ask yourself what would you sacrifice for the health, for the very life of your children? How would you respond if God Himself were to ask you quite individually and specifically for some sacrifice that in appearance would cost you their lives, or your own? Then, in the light of this awareness, reflect on what God, through His Church, actually does ask you to do during Lent.
You need not offer God the price of your life, nor of your sins. He has paid that bill and exceeded its cost in expiation of all your sins and mine, grave and small. You need not redeem the lives of your children and loved ones by sacrificing to God something that you otherwise need to survive; their redemption and ours is already purchased. But how will you, in this season set apart for the purpose, cling to God in communion of holiness, and thus achieve blessedness? Let go your grip on whatever else you cling to, whatever lesser good, and take hold of God’s promise of mercy in faith. Though it will not kill you, this is a true sacrifice.
