GIFTS OF GREAT WORTH
Matthew is the only Gospel writer to tell us about the Magi seeking the King of the Jews. When they come to Jesus, they did not arrive empty-handed. Their gifts to the young boy are royal, expensive, and mysterious. This makes me think about the gifts and offerings we make to God.
In the Bible the first mention of an offering is when Cain and Abel make their different sacrifices in Genesis Chapter 4. A sacrifice is a gift of great worth. Our English word WORSHIP is really “worth-ship”; giving to God our time, attention, and valuables. Author Christopher Carstens writes in a book exploring the Mass that “Most of us associate sacrifice with giving up, going without, destruction, deprivation, loss, pain, suffering. If we focus so absolutely on these unpleasant aspects of sacrifice, we are consequently tempted to sacrifice to God things that are small, those that are not essential to us, gifts that are on the heart’s periphery and disconnected from the core of our being.”
In view of this same thought, Pope Benedict VXI said the concept of sacrifice has been “buried under the debris of endless misunderstandings!” Sacrifices should be valuable offerings given joyously out of love.
In the Old Testament, many offerings involved very expensive and necessary animals. When we toss a ten dollar bill in the collection basket, that is NOTHING like the goat or sheep or bull the Israelites sacrificed. For us, it would be more like donating a major appliance or used car. An animal sacrifice was also a total gift; the animal was killed so that no one else may take it. It can not be returned, as it is totally given away. With many sacrifices, the meat was eaten in a sacred meal by the priests and sometimes with the community—but this was always a hardship for the one making the offering. It wasn’t only animals: the earliest growth of the harvest, the choicest grains, the first fruit that has been hungrily awaited was always set aside as a dedication to God. Have we ever given a gift to God to the point of it really, really being a sacrifice? Was it COMPLETELY and TOTALLY given? The first fruit, the long anticipated thing, the very best we have to offer? Do we give Him something of our long labor and patience? Or do we tend to give the leftovers, the lesser, the things that’s an afterthought?!
We have an opportunity to practice being very generous gift-givers. At every Mass, we bring forth bread, wine, and financial offerings. But also, we are called to prayerfully place our whole selves on the altar so that we can be joined with Jesus’s whole self and given to the Father. What happens to every thing placed on the altar at Mass? It’s blessed by the Spirit, taken to God the Father, and given back to us as some thing even greater through Jesus. Ponder that for a moment. The next time the Collection Basket passes by, really focus on it. Imagine at that moment you are placing your daily prayers, gratitude, labors, joys, pleas, and suffering in that basket to be placed on the altar. Anything and everything we have, all we are, all we hope to be, all our stress and anxiety, and all our thanksgiving is all mounded up on that altar to be transubstantiated along with the bread and the wine.
Our worries and struggles may not seem like gifts for anybody, but it’s what God asks from us. And He wants all of that joined with the sacrifice of praise. More than anything He wants us to trust Him. He thirsts for our reliance; He hungers for our total surrender. Because it’s in giving away our fears and doubts that we make room for all His grace! By being vulnerable and honest in asking for His virtue and holiness, by giving Him our contrite heart and an offering of gratitude, we please Him by doing the will of the Father. And He wants us to be joyful givers, hopeful, and eager.
During Mass, we enter this mind blowing exchange where we join the priest in offering Jesus to the Father. How can we? How DARE we? Because we are united with him, we are one, we are his body. We join Jesus and offer ourselves as a living sacrifice. Then all that we have placed on the altar in faith is raised to the Lord, blessed, and given back to us with genuine power and grace.
Jesus gives himself totally to us; body, blood, soul, and divinity. He awaits us to give ourselves totally to him. Life for life. Soul for soul. Body for body. These gifts of the self are so much greater than any of our THINGS. These gifts are even more worthy than those brought by the Wise Men.