Fr Matthew Reese

I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
—Romans 12: 1

Dear Friends in Christ,

On Palm Sunday, after we heard the Passion according to Luke, I read a homily from one of the early Church Fathers, Andrew of Crete (c.660-740 AD).

Andrew’s sermon plays on the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and sends us into the beginning of Holy Week with a firm sense of our spiritual and physical connection within the Body of Christ:

“So let us spread before [Jesus’] feet,” he writes, “not garments or soulless olive branches, which delight the eye for a few hours and then wither, but ourselves, clothed in his grace, or rather, clothed completely in him. We who have been baptized into Christ must ourselves be the garments that we spread before him.”

Andrew is reminding us not only of the wonderful passage from Romans that we read this morning, but also all the passages in the Eucharistic liturgy that we might call “self-oblations.”

In Rite I, it’s most apparent: “And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee…”

(We might recall another famous passage from Psalm 51 “the sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, shalt thou not despise.”)

What does it mean to offer ourselves as a living sacrifice?

I think there is no easy answer to this. Certainly, no particular answer which will speak to all Christian believers. There are as many ways to come to God, to be in His presence, to live out His will in the world as there are children of God.

But I think the first step is probably to come to God in the totality of our humanity. Not just to come to God in our moments of fear, but also in our moments of joy, and in every quotidian emotion and action in between. To give our unvarnished selves to our Creator.

The Christian call—the call of the Resurrection—is a call to life… a call to living. If we are indeed to be a living sacrifice, we must have a living and vibrant faith. And we must be committed especially to that “reasonable service.” For our service to others is a service to God.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Matthew