Is there a more Catholic saying than this one? Offer it up! If you've been in or around a Catholic for more than an hour you are sure to have heard this phrase uttered at least once.
When I found my faith in my 20’s I often heard a lot of Catholic jargon amongst the community. People seemed to speaking in this Catholic language that was a little foregin to me. There were many words and phrases that I didn't understand. 'Offer it up' was one of many but because I was embarrassed about being so ‘new’ to the church as an adult I never really asked. I would just smile and nod.
The first time I heard ‘offer it up’ I was genuinely confused. It was of course in the context of a conversation about suffering. Any time people spoke about any small or large suffering, the advice coming from the Catholics around me would be to ‘offer it up’.
I didn’t get it. Offer what? What’s it? Up? Up where? What are you talking about?! Am I missing something? It seemed like an odd thing to say to someone when discussing their suffering.
When I came into my own suffering stage of life I heard this again, but now it was directed at me as advice, and honestly I didn't really like hearing it. It kind of felt like a slap in the face. In the thick of my suffering the last thing I wanted to hear was someone telling me to ‘offer it up’. What does this even mean? What you’re really saying to me is to just suck it up aren't you? Just suck it up Helena, there are worse pains in the world, look what Christ did for you, now move on.
And look I get it. There are bigger sufferings in the world than my own. It’s true. But this ‘offer it up’ response just felt like a dismissal of my feelings. I can’t just suck it up. If I could I wouldn’t be talking about the suffering in the first place.
I finally built up the courage to ask, ‘What do you actually mean when you say offer it up?’ but I never got a sufficient answer. I just kept getting these vague explanations about offering the pain or suffering up to God. But still it made no sense to me. How can me offering my pain be of any benefit to God? And more importantly, how does it benefit me? I'm the one in pain here, not Him!
Well... what does it mean?
Here's what I learned. To understand this message you need to be familiar with the stories in the Bible. How did God teach his chosen people to worship him in the Old Testament? Through sacrifice. They offered sacrifices to Him. Animal sacrifices, harvest offerings, blood thrown at the altars and all that Old Testament stuff that we never pay too much attention to. But think about why? Why did God teach them to do this? Because there is an appropriate way to worship God - and at that time in history, that was it.
We know now that Jesus came and gave us a new and eternal covenant that means this type of sacrifice is no longer needed. But the reason I bring it up is just to point out that from the beginning, all the way in Genesis, people offered sacrifices to God. You remember the story of Cain and Abel offering sacrifices to God? And who can forget the story of Abraham walking up that mountain with the offering of his beloved son? That story is crazy right? The lengths these people went to offer something to God!
It’s that story of Abraham offering his son Isaac that really woke me up though. Because that story only makes sense in the light of Christ. Abraham walking up a mountain, his son walking behind with the wood for the burnt offering across his shoulders. When they arrive atop the mountain and Isaac questions "Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" Abraham replies “God himself will provide the lamb for the sacrifice”. And He did. They look over and caught in the thicket is the ram for them to offer on their altar. But this was just a prefigurement of what was to come. Because when Abraham said God Himself would provide the sacrifice, that’s exactly what he meant.
God provided His only begotten Son, so that anyone who believed in Him would not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). God literally offered Himself to us as the perfect unblemished sacrifice. He took on human flesh and bore the pain of sin and death to grant us access to eternal life. Since I was a child I've heard these stories, I've been taught about Jesus offering His life for me, but I never thought to ask myself, what will I offer to Him in return?
What can I offer though? Whatever I offer Him pales in comparison, that's for sure. But I should do it anyway. Jesus changed the essence of worship at the Last Supper and on Calvary. He literally gave His body for me on that Cross and the new covenant He made means that His flesh is still on offer for me every single day at every Catholic Church across the world. If I want, I can wake up every single day, take myself to Mass and be nourished by Him. “I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me shall never be hungry, and whoever believes in me shall never be thirsty." ( John 6:35)
Jesus carried a cross on his shoulders and walked Himself to his own death. That's how much He loves me. So what am I going to do with my cross? When people told me to ‘offer it up’ what they meant was to offer my suffering, my cross, to Jesus.
It doesn’t matter what kind of cross you are carrying. Whatever it is: your pain, your sin, your broken relationships, your addiction, your family wounds, your grief, your anger. Any of it, all of it! Don't stare at it and get angry about it. Don’t fall into despair at the weight of it. Pick up the cross in your life and offer it to God.
How? How do you do that? Easy. You say, “God I don't want this Cross, I can’t handle it. It’s too much, I don't know what to do with it, and it’s too heavy for me. I am going to offer it to You, and by doing that, it will no longer hold power over me. My cross is now Yours too and the focus of my life will no longer be this pain, this suffering. I know what You do with crosses. I know how the story ends. Because the suffering you bore on Good Friday was for me. So here you go, have my pain, have my suffering, have my cross. Unite my cross to Your cross and let it be for a greater good. However you see fit God to use it, You do with it what You will. And please Lord, please, give me the strenght to endure it”.
What happens when you offer it up?
Honestly it’s hard to say. I'm still a work in progress so can only tell you what I'm learning as I journey through it. What will He do with this suffering of mine? Maybe He will do exactly what I want or maybe He won’t. Maybe I will be delivered from it, maybe I won’t. Maybe I still have years to go, maybe it will all change tomorrow. All I can do is just focus on today. How will I carry my Cross today?
St Paul said to the Colossains “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the church…” I would be lying if I said I'm anything like St Paul. I'm not rejoicing just yet, I got some way to go still.
But the thing I try to always remember and hold on to is those words of Christ in the Gospel of Matthew: "If anyone is to come after me, let him deny himself, pick up his cross and follow me."
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