What should she give up for her first real participation in Lent? Fairly standard choices came to mind…dessert, wine, buying unnecessary stuff.
Then there are the ‘doing something’ choices like praying the rosary or going to weekday Mass.
Our phone chat moved on to our usual griping….complaints of the week, hassles, political exasperations, difficult family situations. These topics could easily extend into an hour-long call if we had the time. Whatever we were talking about prompted my cousin to throw out, “Well this stuff (annoying spousal habit; a broken new phone; leaving the chicken in the trunk of the car after shopping) isn’t about to change any time soon so we might as well accept it.”
With that thought, my cousin circled back to Lent. Maybe instead of forgoing cake, cookies, bagels, whatever for 40 days, we could offer up our habit of complaining.
Hmmm…I kinda like our gripe sessions every couple of weeks. Sometimes they even bring on a good laugh. Maybe giving up ice cream would be easier.
Offer It Up
The cross is the unique sacrifice of Christ, the “one mediator between God and men” [1 Timothy 2:5]. But because in his incarnate divine person he has in some way united himself to every man, “the possibility of being made partners, in a way known to God, in the paschal mystery” is offered to all men (CCC 618).
As members of Christ’s Mystical Body, we are participants in that redemptive self-offering of Christ. St. Paul left the Church a vivid and poignant understanding of just what that means when he insisted:
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church (Colossians 1:24).
St. John Paul II summed up the relationship between Christ’s redemptive sacrifice and our mysterious participation in it with these words:
In bringing about the Redemption through suffering, Christ has also raised human suffering to the level of the Redemption. Thus each man, in his suffering, can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ (Salvifici Doloris, 19).
2 thoughts on “Offer It Up”
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Thanks to your post Mam Patty! Your article reminds me that everything in our lives, works, pains, struggles, our crosses – everything can be an opportunity to participate in the suffering of Christ for the atonement of sins of the world. Your mom’s example has an impact to your life and to everyone who gets her church-based maxim of “offering it up.”