Chapter 6
What if we have badly misread the word “sacrifice”? Somewhere in the history of Western piety, it became a word about privation, about grinding loss, about the spiritual merit of going without. But in its oldest meaning, it carries none of that. To sacrifice is to make something sacred, to hand it across the threshold from the ordinary into the holy. It is a gesture of love, not a gesture of pain. The creature who offers is not diminishing themself; they are discovering, in the act of giving, the shape of their own deepest nature. We are made in the image of the Triune God, who is eternally and freely self-giving within the communion that is God’s very being. M. Chironna
When we offer, we are not performing a duty. We are becoming what we were always intended to be. Perhaps this season reminds us that Lent is not meant to be measured by what we give up outwardly, but by how deeply we allow ourselves to be transformed within.
Wishing you a good start to this week!
Philemon