Topic:  What does offering something up mean?

Source of this posting: Moderator response

Date originally posted: April 16, 2003

Moderator who originally posted this source: James Corbett

Question:   Please help me to explain what it means to offer something up.This was a common practice for me as a child growing up in NY attending Catholic school. The nuns always told us to (Offer it Up)I try to explain this to new catholics but I have trouble putting it into words.As I understood it, It means when we have a certain cross to carry in our life we can (Offer it Up) to God for whatever intention we would like addressed. Example: For the souls in purgatory. I also offer my cross for a sick friend. Please help me to explain how this works.Thank you....

Answer: 

To "offer it up" generally refers to offering up our own sufferings so as to share in Christ suffering. Although Christ’s suffering redeemed humanity, within his suffering a space has been left for us to participate, through grace, in a fellowship of suffering. The individual that willingly operates in the space created by Christ properly responds in gratitude to the gift of free will. Freely participating in the mission of Christ throughout time is a receptivity to grace that will lead to a “joyous suffering” embodied in the Eucharist. However, there is a distinct difference in the suffering that is representative of the self-surrender of the three persons of the Trinity and the misery that is attributable to cautious self-preservation.

Within the Trinitarian relationship lie the infinite possibilities for humankind and a revelation of the end for which we were made.The love of God the Father, in bringing forth the Son, is responded to by the Son in a total surrender of being and the bringing forth of the Holy Spirit.While the gift and self-surrender God expressed in begetting the Son was matched by the Son and the Spirit, humanity often fails to properly respond to the gift of entry into the triune relationship. The recklessness with which the Father gives away himself can encounter a freedom that, instead of responding in kind to God's magnanimity, changes into calculating cautious self preservation. This response indicates a refusal to recognize that human freedom itself is a gift from God. While it is valid to offer up our suffferings that are the result of our self surrender to one another and reflective of the self surrender of the three persons of the trinity, the sufferings we encounter as a result of individualistic goals and self preservation is not a redeeming suffering and results in misery and a painful unredemptive suffering that we should seek to remedy at all costs.

In offering our own sufferings up we join in Christ sufferings endured on the Cross.We find support for this thesis in Colossians 1:24 which says, "Whereof I paul am made a minister. Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body which is the Church".The Joyous suffering we encounter as a result of freely entering the space created by Christ can rightfully be "offered up" and is a place where we should find solace.