Make of Me a Worthy Sacrifice

Meditations on Monsignor Knox

Gleanings.

I go back to this quite often.

Msgr. Knox is sharing his insights on the Offertory of the Mass - which is very salutary for me as that is the part of the Mass in which I confess to "spacing out" the most, alas. And it is quite ironic that I should do so because that is the time when I, as a layman, have the MOST intimate participation. I am asked to intentionally place myself and my life with the bread under the priest's hands to be offered to God.

Msgr. Knox makes a further, most beautiful distinction between how we might view our offering of the Bread on the paten and our offering of the wine in the Chalice. With the host we offer all that we are right now: our bodies, our souls, all that we are, as a gift. Into the cup with the wine we place all that is to become of us. "The destiny that awaits us, of the good fortune and the misfortune he means to send us." So, with the bread we offer up the NOW, and with the cup we offer up (as Jesus did in Gethsemane) the "cup" of all that WILL be in our lives - both joy and sorrow. We give Him our past, present and future all in one offering of bread and wine. I find that such an incredible thought! And the Offertory will not be the same for me again.

But the most beautiful part is when he says this:

"You see we've been making this offering of our lives to God and feeling pretty generous, rather fine fellows, as we did it; and then suddenly we remember how frightfully unimportant a single, human life like that must, in a sense, be to Him. When we have been trying to get Him interested in our ridiculous little affairs, our wholly unimportant births, marriages and deaths, we feel like a child that has just shown its mother some staring, shapeless picture, some terribly bad poem that didn't rhyme or scan or make sense, and expected her to say, ‘Very nice, darling’. The Mass is like that all through you see; we alternate continually between rushing to God with the consciousness of our needs, and then being driven back into a kind of shame-faced, tongue-tied humility by the thought of God's majesty and our insignificance. Those are the two motifs that constantly cross and recross, making up the pattern of the dance for us. Yes, offer him your life by all means; but don't forget your sense of proportion. Don't forget that it's very much the same situation as when you stoop down and pick up a butterfly that has made a forced landing and isn't feeling too good; ‘Poor thing,’ you say, and make as if to stroke its wings. that is how we ought to see our lives, if we are to see things in proportion. We lie there humbled and crushed, and God picks us up; that is the kind of sacrifice he desires."

- Msgr. Ronald Knox, The Mass in Slow Motion

Ah, I just LOVE him.

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