SACRIFICE
A few Wednesdays ago, we were at daily mass (the Father Matt special, which lasts 28 minutes beginning to end1). In this case, “we” was me, and Jonny, and our youngest three children. We’re not daily mass goers, really, but we do show up sometimes after dropping the other children off at school. Near the end of the mass my two-year-old son decided to pitch in:
Father Matt: “May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands…”
My child: “SACRIFICE!”
Father Matt: “for the praise and glory of His name…”
My child: “SAC-RI-FICE!”
Father Matt: “for our good and the good of all His holy Church.”
My child: “He say SACRIFICE!”
He bounced across the pew we were sharing with the godmother of one of our daughters, chanting “sacrifice.” After the mass was over, she turned to me—“Did you hear him saying ‘sacrifice’?”
Well. Yes. I did. I’m pretty sure that everyone in the church did. I smiled, rather sheepishly, and explained, “One time, I found the kids stabbing an empty cardboard box with pencils and yelling ‘SACRIFICE—SACRIFICE!’ That’s where he learned the word.”
She laughed and encouraged me, “Well, you never know. They hear more than we think.” She has ten kids, so she knows a thing or two about this.
A sacrifice—“the surrender of something for the sake of something else.”2
My son doesn’t really know what a “sacrifice” is. Unless a “sacrifice” is an object poked full of holes.3 Okay, fine, maybe he knows more about this than I’m giving him credit for. But the gleeful little scene he made at mass reminded me that none of us really know what our “sacrifices” will cost when we first promise to make them.
I used to preface all kinds of speeches with, “No one really tells you what it’s going to be like to be a parent…”
But I’ve come to realize that before I was a parent, I couldn’t have understood what the sacrifices would have been like, even if someone had tried to tell me. This well-meaning someone could have said to pre-marriage me, “You will have to change plans—both macro and micro level plans—so many times. You’re going to become a reluctant expert on plan changes.”
And I would have said, “SACRIFICE! SA-CRI-FICE! He say SACRIFICE!”
It’s still good to make sacrifices even though you can’t know the future. It’s very normal to start out by joyfully chanting “SACRIFICE” and then later find out what you were really saying. Any sacrifice is accompanied by un-thought of steps, unforeseen situations, unimagined pain. You can’t comprehend the totality until later. This progression doesn’t mean you did something wrong or that “you should have known.” And, no, you could not have known.
Yesterday morning, Jonny was reading Psalm 51.
Jonny: “My sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit…”
Same child: “sacrifice!”
Jonny: “a contrite, humbled heart, O God, you will not scorn. Treat Zion kindly according to your good will; build up the walls of Jerusalem. Then you will desire the sacrifices of the just…”
Same child: “sacrifiiiiiiiiice!”
The sacrifice demanded of us is our hearts—our hard, hesitant, faltering, fearful hearts. Nothing could really prepare us for what that’s going to be like. The hardest thing to give up is whoever you were before.
But. Like Father Matt prays at every mass, sacrifice is for our good. To reference my example from earlier, I really do hate changing plans. But my vocation demands it (doesn’t everyone’s, with us being “not God” and all?), and I’m better off because of it. I spend less time clenching my teeth. I don’t freak out when the restaurant is closed. When one of my toddlers behaves like a toddler in the middle of mass, and I stay where I am instead of grabbing him and running for the back of the church.
We surrender ourselves for the praise and glory of His name, and for the good of the church—but the surrender is for our own good, too. No, we don’t know what it will cost. But we do know that it will be for our good. And when you’re in the trenches, whether forgoing baked goods at the office during Lent or staying married until one of you is dead in the ground, it’s helpful to remember that.
Preorder Giveaway!
Please drop me an email or a comment (or text me or tell me in person) if you preorder Eucharistic Saints OR if you tell a friend (or two, or twelve!) about the book. I’d love to add you to my giveaway list — I’ll choose a winner on Easter week, and send them a (very cool, if I do say so myself) “Saint Related Stuff I Love” Gift Box.
This is a very reverent and beautiful mass. He manages to make it so short by limiting his (excellent) homilies to about three sentences.
Thank you, Merriam Webster