When my family gathers for prayer, we usually include a specific Act of Love that I found at the back of a Sunday missal many years ago. I remember the disappointment I felt when the next year’s version no longer included it. I had become attached to it. Some of the standard prayers included would leave me feeling … less than romantic. I had to find an old copy so that I could work on memorizing it.
A finishing line in the prayer goes like this: “May I die to the world for love of You, as You died on the cross for love of me. O God, You are all mine. Grant that I may be all Yours, in time and in eternity.”
That is romantic love. And I think it wraps up the love of God quite well. He is all mine. He has held nothing back in his love for me. Please God that, somehow, and only with Your grace, I might give myself fully to you. The cross was your act of love to me, and my death to the world is a necessary act in my love for you.
St. Maximillian Kolbe wrote that love lives through sacrifice and is nourished by giving. “Without sacrifice, there is no love. Sacrifice the senses, taste, hearing, and above all, the mind and will in holy obedience.”
My children’s catechism asks the question of what we should learn from the sacrifice of Christ. The answer, which I think sums up our faith, is that “we learn from the sacrifice of Christ the evil of sin, and God’s love for man.”
Every time we practise that question, I point to the crucifix on the wall and try to drive it into their brains that every time they see an image of Christ crucified they should remember these two things. Their salvation is dependent upon these two truths: man’s sin is evil, no matter the circumstance, the justification, the degree. Sin is evil and insulting to God, who is all-good and deserving of all our love. And yet … and yet! God’s great love for man drove him to give all there was to give, to pull him up out of the mire of that sin. God’s desperate love for me brings him to a place of absurdity. God hangs on a tree that he created from nothing, bleeding and anguished in payment for sins he could never commit. “Greater love hath no man than this …”
During every single Mass we are brought through eternity and invited to place ourselves at the foot of the cross. Really and truly, the one and only sacrifice of Christ is re-presented, so that we may unite ourselves to him. We are meant to unite Christ’s sacrifice to God with our own sacrifices and sufferings, our own love for God. This is actually what is meant by “active participation” in the Mass. Many of us grew up mistakenly thinking that active participation meant having some kind of part in the Mass, reading, leading the choir, or saying the right thing at the right time. To participate in the sacrifice of Christ is to unite ourselves with him, even if it is done silently and hidden from the rest of the congregation. The temple veil is lifted at the moment of consecration, and we kneel before Christ truly present. God asks us if we will run to him, wrap our arms desperately around his feet, and hide ourselves within his wounds, as he offers himself to God the Father in satisfaction for our sins.
Our small offerings of Lenten sacrifices, prayers, almsgivings, time spent reading the Scriptures, and fulfilling the acts of mercy are what make us who we are … persons who love Christ and sacrifice our own will and mind and preferences, or persons who do not. Persons who see Christ in the other and give ourselves fully, or persons who do not. Our small acts of fasting and self-denial, as they imitate Christ on the cross (even as they imitate them in a way that resembles a child’s copy of a great work of art), become acts of love, and those acts of love are what we bring with us to the foot of the cross. We bring our love, meagre as it is, to the foot of the cross and we hide there in his wounds, as his beating heart makes up for what is lacking. And then we approach the Father together. This is active participation. And that is our faith.
