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The Christmas Cycle
cross in Jerusalem. Today we join the Offertory procession led by the child Jesus; as the Epistle
admonishes us: “Brethren, I beseech you by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a
living sacrifice, holy, pleasing unto God, your reasonable service” (Epistle).
Jesus goes to Jerusalem to make His offering. For many centuries the Jews from all parts of
the land have made pilgrimages to Jerusalem to offer sacrifice in the temple, where the holy
sacrificial fire burned continually in the courtyard. Animals were continually slaughtered
and their blood was sprinkled on the altar of sacrifice. But these sacrifices were not fully
pleasing to God. They had no power to free men from sin, nor to justify them in the sight of
God; neither could they bring to God the honor that was His due. A new kind of sacrifice
must be found, and it would be found. “I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord of hosts;
and I will not receive a gift of your hand. For from the rising of the sun even to the going
down, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there
is offered to my name a clean oblation; for my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the
Lord of hosts” (Mal 1:10 f.). Today the incarnate Son of God goes up to the mountain of the
temple for the first time as a full grown Israelite, and there quietly and unnoticed He makes
His offering. With Mary and Joseph He offers the humble gift of the poor; but together
with this humble external gift He adds His inner self, His entire being, His willingness to
undertake whatever the heavenly Father desires of Him. “Behold I come. In the head of the
book it is written of me that I should do Thy will, O God” (Heb 10:7). This is the perfect
offering in which the Father is well pleased.
Jesus takes us with Him when He goes to make His offering. “Brethren, I beseech you by
the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing unto God, your
reasonable service” (Epistle). To the offering of the Savior we add the offering of ourselves. At
the Offertory of the Mass we give everything that we have. We offer ourselves, body and soul,
as a pure and sinless sacrifice to God. We are to offer to God our “reasonable service”; that is,
we are to make an offering that has been sanctified by the spirit, by grace, faith, and love.
Our offering does not begin with the Offertory of the Mass, and it does not end there; it
must include every action of the day and everything we do as Christians. This truth we learn
from the Epistle, which continues: “And be not conformed to this world [that is, to its motives,
its point of view, its works], but be reformed in the newness of your mind, that you may prove
what is the good, and the acceptable, and the perfect will of God.” A new spirit must be born
in us; the spirit of Christ must envelop us. We must learn to love what He loves and hate what
He hates, to do what He wishes, and to model our lives after the example which He has given
us. In this spirit we will understand, love, and do what is “the good, and the acceptable, and the
perfect will of God” (Epistle). “Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing unto God,”
in union with the sacrifice of Christ, who this day is in our midst and offers Himself up with us.
To be a Christian means that we must make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem with Jesus, that we
must offer ourselves up with Him in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and in all our daily actions.
“For I have given you an example, that as I have done to you, so you do also” ( John 13:15).
“Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing unto God.” Our bodies are something
more than a base prison for our souls, something more than the corrupt source of
evil and wickedness, something more than the base material which is the source of all sin. It
has the honor and the duty of being a holy offering made to God. By means of a new spirit
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