My Morning Offering
Each morning, the very first thing we should do
as Catholics is to make what is called our "Morning Offering" to
God: the offering ourselves to Him.
It is a prayer
of your own making in which you offer to God everything
... everything that you are, experience and suffer this day.
The words are your own for you are speaking to your Heavenly Father, to
Christ your King, to the Holy Ghost your Counselor. There are many wonderful
prayers that you can find by the Saints or recommended to you by Holy Mother
the Church if you are at a loss at the beginning. Choose one as a starting
point, to learn the depth of the beauty and meaning of this holy practice.
The following prayer may be helpful to you, but your words will be different,
for your life is different: what you suffer, what you need, those in your
life whom you love, your own difficulties and aspirations these
you will hold up to God, beginning your day:
In Nomine Patris +, et Filii +,
et Spiritus Sancti +
(making the Sign of the Cross,
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost)
Amen.
O, Holy Ghost, I beg Thee, come and
fill me, possess me totally. Remove from me all that is not of Thee, from
Thee, Thee Thyself!
Mary, Mother
of God, please pray with me and for me!
Heavenly Father, Lord Jesus Christ, Holy Ghost, I love Thee above all
and before all, and all in Thee!
I offer myself to Thee: all that I am, all that I have, all that pertains
to me; all that I suffer, all that happens to me.
Give to me
as it pleases Thee. Take from me as it pleases Thee.
I beg Thee,
Lord my God, fulfill within me perfectly Thy most holy will. Make
of me what You will. Do with me what You will!
I beg Thee, Lord my God, Heavenly Father, Lord Jesus Christ, O Holy Ghost
Holy Trinity, One God
do with me as You will!
I beg Thee, Lord my God, unite me in my suffering
with Thee, my Jesus, in The Garden, at the Pillar, and on the Cross! Unite
my suffering to Thine, I beg Thee!
Lord my God, I hold up to Thee all those I love, my friends, and my enemies.
Keep them, I beg Thee, for Thyself in time, and in eternity
before Thy Beatific Vision in Heaven forever. Protect them from the evil
one and every evil! I offer myself to Thee for them: give me their
suffering and I will gladly bear it for them. Take their suffering from
them and give it to me!
Have mercy on me, a sinner. Make me one with Thee in all things.
In a special way I hold up to Thee (names of people who need Gods mercy
and healing, His guidance and protection, and those most dear to you),
and all those poor souls in Purgatory who have no one to pray for them
and who most need thy consolation.
I hold up to
Thee Pope Benedict XVI and all his intentions. Strengthen him and help him
to lead Thy Church into all holiness.
Have mercy on me and all poor sinners, especially those of us most in need
of Thy mercy.
I offer all to Thee in union with Thy Son Jesus Christ in the Most Holy
Sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world, and through the Immaculate Heart
of Mary.
In Nomine Patris +, et Filii +, et Spiritus Sancti +
Amen.
Upon waking and before all else
or as soon as it is possible to us we should drop to our knees
before God and make our Morning Offering of ourselves to Almighty God. It
is the beginning of our day, and as the Psalmist reminds us,
Nisi aedificaverunt domum,
in vanum laboraverunt qui aedificant eum
Unless the
Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it.
1 The foundation of our day is no one else and nothing else than
God, and unless our day is built upon Him, all we do is in vain.
We can be sure that once we have offered ourselves, and the obligations
of our day, to God, nothing absolutely nothing will
touch upon us except that He wills it or permits it for our sanctification.
No suffering, no humiliation, no weariness, no weakness, no temptation of
this day can touch upon us that is not ordained by Almighty God to our good
and the good of others. Most often we will be largely unaware of the reality
of the things that transpire in our day that are precious to God
and to
which we are purblind. Simple words, gestures the mere presence
of our being among others touches and influences their lives in ways we
cannot see or anticipate. Sometimes, from afar, and utterly unknown to us,
another will observe what we do and in that instant a seed
is planted in their souls that grows to everlasting life in Christ
because we are faithful to what we have offered and promised God
at the beginning of our day.
Saint Francis once famously said, Preach the Gospel
and if necessary
use words. Our example is the most poignant testimony to the life of Christ
within us. And that example perceived by others and completely
unknown to us is what changes the lives of others, turns the
lives of others to Christ and Holy Mother the Church, His Body. All that
we purpose to do to for the glory of God pales in significance beside what
we do unknown to us and known to others.
What is notable in this Morning Offering is the prayer for union with Christ,
not in His glory, but in the ignominy of His suffering through which He
redeemed the world. It has been said that many there are who would gladly
walk with Christ upon His Triumphant Entry into Jerusalem, when palm branches
were strewn in his path and the crowd proclaimed, Hosanna, Son of David!
and few there are who will walk with Him on His sorrowful road to
Calvary. All gathered around Him in His glory, and all fled Him in His suffering
and humiliation.
This prayer asks for total union with Christ especially in
His suffering: in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night of his betrayal,
at the Pillar to which He was chained and scourged to the white of His bones,
and on the Cross of His Agony, despised by the world, ridiculed, and mortified
in what seemed His abandonment. But it was through His suffering that He
redeemed the world and we wish to share intimately in it with
Him through the little, insignificant sufferings and humiliations we experience
throughout our day that we may be one with Him in all things,
at all times. Not when it will earn us acclaim and esteem, but reproach
and malice.
Your suffering is not yours to choose. It will come to you withal, and on
terms decidedly not to your liking. You will embrace the Angel of consolation
who came to Christ in the Garden, the chains that bind your hands to the
scourging of the world, and the Cross itself upon which you have already
died in Christ, and now seek to renew that death for Him: the dying to yourself,
to your own will, that you may live in and for Christ alone
that you may be with Him in all things and at all times. In your present
suffering
and in the glory to be revealed on the day of the culmination
of your life in Christ, when this world passes and all within it
and in
your astonishment that all that Christ promised is real
far more real
than the world that has passed, and would have deceived you that it is life.
But Christ only is the Life. You have found that He is the Way and the Truth.
You need only to come to that staggering realization, that He alone is the
Life. And it is everlasting.
It is a journey to Heaven that begins each day
on your knees.
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1
Psalm 126.1
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