Six days before Passover, Mary of Bethany set aside her savings, her quiet reclusiveness, and her best veil to anoint the dusty feet of her friend and teacher. When he died five days later – suddenly and violently – I am positive she did not regret the sacrifice.
Have you ever wondered how those intriguing yet obscure characters in the Gospel experienced Holy Week? How did the Canaanite woman whose daughter had been healed by “crumbs” of grace feel when she learned the Master had been crucified? How did the Samaritan woman from the well react when the man who “told her everything she had done” fell silent? What about the man from whom a Legion of demons had been cast – he who had stayed behind to witness to his neighbors when Jesus asked him to remain?
I’d like to know.
Yet, I think the way these people experienced Holy Week and Easter was greatly shaped by how they had lived each day since their encounter with Christ.
How have we lived this Lent? Let’s be honest – some Lents are heartfelt; we can feel our souls growing and we can see the fruits of our penances. And some rush by, just like the days full of work and projects and loved ones’ needs and meals and bed.
It’s funny, because while most of my days can be a whirlwind and a blur, the start or middle of some seasons seems so long. Yet, Lent is one of those strange periods that I want so to hasten along at the start and then I want to push back and prolong at the end. To be honest, it often takes all of this penitential season for me to realize what I need or want to change within my spiritual life and vocation, and then I’m dumped into the joyous Easter season feeling as if I don’t deserve it.
This year, I read a new description of sacrifice, though, that changed my perspective and brought to mind all these individuals who encountered Christ intimately and then faded from the scene. Like Mary of Bethany, they shine for a moment but then our glimpse of them is eclipsed by another’s tale. What presses them all to my soul is the sacrifice each made in that meeting with Jesus.
Often, when we use the word “sacrifice” we intend to signify an offering up. But this offering seems to take substance in the actual “taking on” of a particular suffering or foregoing of pleasure. Consequently, the word has a negative connotation – oh, for sure, the mind recognizes the value of the deed – but we feel a sense of struggle and sadness, a remembrance that we are required to bend our stubborn wills and bat down our pursuit of comfort.
How would our outlook change, though, if we flipped this definition around and considered it from a different, truer perspective? In her book, The Lost Art of Sacrifice, Vicki Burbach breaks down the term “sacrifice” into its Latin roots sacer and facere to rebuild its definition as “to do something sacred” or to “offer something for a sacred purpose”. If we were to extrapolate further and replace “sacred” with “extraordinary”, she writes that we would consider sacrifice as the offering of something we have or do to be transformed to something extraordinary.
Isn’t that what true sacrifice is? When we give up that piece of chocolate, for instance, we’re not just driving our will into submission by denying its preference but we’re asking God to take that desire for a little good and transform it to a desire for the greatest good. If we offer up some physical pain we’re forced to endure, we’re not fooling ourselves that we should be enjoying it, but we’re begging God to take it and work something meaningful with it.
To sacrifice isn’t to dejectedly resign ourselves to something as it ought or must be, but to see a higher purpose for something ordinary.
Mary set aside her fortune to publicly recognize the One who was sacred. The Canaanite woman set aside her pride to allow her faith and humility to flourish, which led to her daughter’s healing. The man freed from demons set aside his desire to personally accompany Jesus in the trust that his life would bear more fruit lived according to the guidance of his Lord.
If we dig even deeper into this understanding of sacrifice, we might see our entire understanding of our trials change. Perhaps our struggle to sacrifice comes from missing the final end of an object or gift. For instance, I may feel intensely that I have legs in order to run and hike as I long to do but in my current pregnancy, maybe their real purpose is to support the growing baby inside. God has chosen them for a higher, extraordinary end; I can either reluctantly face this reality with complaints and half-hearted acceptance or I can see through the discomfort to recognize the “final end” of the legs has changed and has become something more sacred.
Or take the use of our talents. How many of us embarked into adulthood with dreams of fame or success, and now wonder at the seeming waste of these skills in our vocation or a more practically chosen profession?
How our frustration would change if we consider that yes, those gifts could be used in the original way we planned, but maybe God always intended them for a different purpose.
The world may tell us to make a profit or win the esteem of others with our honed skills; but God might be inviting us to use them in a more hidden way, for a more sacred design that will actually bring us greater happiness. He has already intended them to be set aside, and desires us to join Him in dedicating them for that holy purpose.
How would we see our lives differently if we considered that those sacrifices we’re asked to make are actually opportunities to see the designs and purposes of our Father and Creator? We would have to be humble and willing to set aside our own vision of things, but in this setting aside, wouldn’t we be accepting a wiser and greater and more joyous vision?
And this is how Lent turns to Eastertide. Because a true sacrifice or offering doesn’t reject a lesser or material good for a spiritual good temporarily, but takes us into a clearer, deeper understanding of what is true and what is our purpose; takes an ordinary day into the extraordinary; makes an annoying or painful aspect of our life sacred which, by its nature, must increase our joy.
Mary’s offering shows the world that this humble teacher is the King. Jesus’ offering of himself on the cross breaks open heaven for us, making this unjust, violent execution a victory of love. This act of “setting aside” shows us what is more real.
If your Lent hasn’t seen you conquering some vice or persevering through a challenging penance, let these last days still be a time for the Word to whisper into your soul what He wants to elevate in your life, what could be set aside for Him to turn to the sacred and beautiful.
Let your cross not be a burden on your shoulders but, in your suffering or penance, a bridge to the next tier on this mountain we’re climbing.
And all those souls that had been touched by Christ? I think they somehow knew, because they given their own desires over to his designs, that Easter joy was coming.
