Offer It Up.
I’m sure you’ve heard these words a thousand times. “Offer it up.” It’s sort of a shorthand way of saying, “stop your complaining,” “get over it,” “suck it up, buttercup.”
But of course that’s not the first meaning of these words, and is far from the original intention of truly offering up something to God.
“Stop your complaining” can be a stoic or nihilistic response to the difficulties of life. The stoic keeps a stiff upper lip in the face of adversity. It is admirable to witness the stoic’s stubborn persistence in the face of adversity. But stoicism ends there. The adversity is just a setback, an empty test that proves there is a greater strength in me. Apart from that, it is simply meaningless suffering.
The nihilist doesn’t look inward for strength in the face of difficulties. Rather, he looks at the world and says, “See, that’s just the way things are – it’s all meaningless, so just accept it and keep going. There’s nothing more to hope for or expect.”
Perhaps we often hear – or speak – “Offer it up” like a stoic or a nihilist.
But how different to hear these words as a Christian. St. Paul exhorts the Christians in Rome to “offer it up” in these words: “I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.” (Romans 12:1)
And St. Peter describes our “offering” as a way of encountering Christ and sharing in his saving work. “Come to him, a living stone, rejected by human beings but chosen and precious in the sight of God, and, like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 2:4-5)
We don’t offer something that is useless, futile or without value. That would make no sense. On the contrary, a real offering – a real sacrifice – means giving over something that has value for something with an even greater, surpassing value. At Mass, we don’t offer stale bread and spoiled wine to God. But the wheat that has been ground down, the grapes that were crushed, have become nourishing food and drink. We offer these good things to God, who receives our offering, transforms it, and gives us his very self in return.
The saints show us what it looks like to make the whole of our lives an offering to God. Maybe you can look up the life of a favorite saint to see how they learned to “offer it up.” And it remains great advice to “offer it up” for the holy souls in purgatory, for peace in our troubled world, for the needs of our own family and friends – to put back in God’s hands what he has entrusted to ours, as an expression of living faith, abiding hope, and enduring love. “Offering it up” with Christ allows us to discover the eternal value in the passing things God places in our hands today.
-Fr. Tom
