Today’s beautiful, poetic text from Isaiah speaks of sacrifice and its reward: If we care for each other and honor our God, abundant blessings shall be ours. 

It seems that sacrifice is often viewed in this transactional way.  Sacrifice is most often considered a ‘giving up’ or ‘offering’ of something, the act of which involves suffering.  We have the idea that putting ourselves through the discipline of self-denial and impoverishment—the suffering of ‘doing without’—is redeeming: It will make us better.  It will improve us, somehow.  And I expect, dear Readers, good Catholics that you are, that you will be able to name, off the top of your head, several of those possible improvements: i.e., greater awareness of the presence of God, compassion for others, humility, etc., etc.

But I invite you to contemplate this: What if we consider these “sacrifices” not so much as actions of self-denial, but as actions for coming into our fullest and most abundant selves?

While we readily acknowledge that suffering can produce good fruit, yet still we don’t really like to suffer: our instincts for self-preservation urge us to avoid pain and potential harm. . . and also (all too often) simple discomfort and inconvenience.  Have you encountered someone who’s jumped over those hurdles—who’s made a significant lifestyle change (diet, exercise, etc.) and is overwhelmingly enthusiastic about how much better it’s made them feel?  They don’t see the changes they made as sacrifices, but rather as steps that are entirely worth the effort to sustain the new life that now sustains them, and they enjoy it more than they could have imagined.

I believe that God is calling us not, ultimately, to a life of denying ourselves—far to the contrary.  We are called to live abundantly: to take the habits of Christ into ourselves so thoroughly that they are natural, comfortable, pleasant—a lifestyle that we can sustain joyfully, because we experience it sustaining us.

Enlightened by the Lord as Teacher (as in today’s psalm) and healed by God as physician (as in today’s Gospel)—this is all about us becoming more whole.

Let us pray that, through this Lent and beyond, we will embrace opportunities to open ourselves to greater abundance, and that our work of “sacrifice” will be so filled with God’s grace that the joy of our new life outshines any pain.  May Christ help us to enjoy the journey!