The Morning Offering
O Jesus,
through the Immaculate Heart of Mary,
I offer You my prayers, works,
joys and sufferings
of this day for all the intentions
of Your Sacred Heart,
in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass
throughout the world,
in reparation for my sins,
for the intentions of all my relatives and friends,
and in particular
for the intentions of the Holy Father.
Our days may seem monotonous and uneventful, but to Our Lord, each day of our lives is unique and unrepeatable. When we can’t receive Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist or be consoled by the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we may feel our relationship with Christ has run dry, but it is precisely these days that are the stuff of sanctity.
a hidden life
For years, we have sat through films, admiring with envy perhaps the extraordinary lives people lead or read amazing biographies of saints and martyrs and think “that will never be me”.
I don’t know if you have watched the film by Terrence Malick, a “A Hidden Life”. The story of an unsung hero, Franz Jägerstätter, who refused to fight for the Nazis in World War II. The film is hard work. It’s 3 hours long with very little dialogue. When watching it with a friend, we sat through 1 hour of it, before she shouted “would they ever talk!”. It was frustrating! To help us along the way, we soothed our impatience with Cadbury’s. The film is long-winded certainly, but in the end, it’s well worth it. It’s one of those films that doesn’t entertain in the moment but afterwards, enriches you in other ways.
Why do I bring this up? Because Franz’s life was so uneventful and so normal. The film synopsis gives the impression of great heroism but throughout his life he struggled with the same things we struggle with, he worried, he was fearful and frankly he had a pretty monotonous life (maybe that’s why Malick wanted us to sit through it for 3 hours!). Sanctity can seem sometimes foreign to a humdrum life but it’s the very thing that makes a saint. There may be one act of great heroism but that is the result of tiny acts each day of a pretty normal existence.
LOVES MEANS DEEDS
St Josemaria Escriva had this phrase: “Love means deeds and not sweet words”. He heard it at a time in his life when he truly desired to love Our Lord above all things. Once, when he was giving Holy Communion to some holy nuns in an enclosed convent, he said to Our Lord in his heart “I love You more than these” and he meant it. But St Josemaria felt Our Lord reply to him: “Love means deeds, and not sweet words”. It was a hard reproach but a very helpful one.
Our love for God is not a feeling. Faith is not a feeling. We can feel love for Our Lord and feel loved by Him at various moments in our life. It’s lovely but it isn’t proof of His love. The proof of Love is in deeds. Do you love Me? “Feed my Sheep” (John 21:17).
So when we wonder to ourselves if we really love Our Lord or does He really love me? Know that He does. He shows it in a number of ways (we just have to ask the Holy Spirit sometimes to help us to discover it). But ourselves? How can we love Him? It’s not so much the feeling or intention of giving Him everything that proves our love but instead it’s redirecting our day to Him, offering it all to Him (the good parts and the bad).
Primer
The Morning Offering is a beautiful prayer. It’s like the primer that we put on the canvas of our day.
“A canvas primer will keep the paint from soaking into the canvas and give it a smoother surface to paint upon. The paint will roll smoother and appear brighter”.
When we pray the Morning Offering first thing in the morning, as soon as we get up from bed, we prepare the canvas of our day. Everything runs smoother and looks brighter.
Each thing we do throughout the day: laughing with a friend, cooking dinner for our family, ironing that shirt or cleaning the floor are all tiny brush strokes that make up our day. Each day, we create a beautiful painting that we can offer to God. Thankfully the paint that Our Lord has given us is oil paint so it’s OK if we make a mistake, we can say sorry and then touch it up.
This is the stuff of saints and the proof of love.