The Art of Sacrifice

Jesus sacrificed His life for us. We hear this over and over again. We read in Sacred Scripture Jesus’ invitation for us to come follow Him. Surely this does not mean we are all to be martyrs. Then what could Jesus mean when he says to the disciples “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it” (Luke 9:23-24)?

When we take a deeper look into all that Jesus sacrificed on the cross, it was more than just His body, it was also His will. Jesus had both a human and divine will; two natures in the one person of Jesus Christ. On the cross, He sacrificed His human will fully and completely to the Father, choosing obedience over His own flesh. This so that He could fulfill His mission as Redeemer.

The human will is where the desires of the flesh get played out; it is where we as fallen human beings experience our ongoing struggle with concupiscence. Even so, God put on our flesh in Christ Jesus, in order to save humanity from ourselves. Jesus teaches us through His passion and death what our own mission is in this life, which is the free sacrificial offering, or laying down, of our will in order to fulfill the will of the Father. This is the mission of every human person. It is also a collective mission in that we as the Body of Christ have the opportunity to encourage one another and witness to our brothers and sisters, the path of this mission. What Jesus first witnessed to all of humanity upon the cross, we have a share in no matter what our state in life.

And yet, the sacrifice of our will is not a one time thing. It is actually more of a process by which we learn how to surrender our will more and more throughout our life. Each time we accept God’s will, in both small and big ways, it often requires that we deny our own human will. By doing this over and over again, we essentially train our will, transforming it and learning how to trust that God’s will is better than our own. Once we are convinced that God is trustworthy, we will then begin to desire God’s will in all things, even when it goes against our own human will.

This is The Way Jesus calls us to! This is what He demonstrated for us on the cross. In the very act of Jesus surrendering His human will to God’s divine will, Jesus is revealing to each and every one of us the path to our salvation. Not all of us will be martyrs, very few of us will carry an actual cross or endure what Jesus endured, but all of us are called to follow Him in His total obedience by sacrificing our will to the Father.

As we spend our lifetime training our human will in the art of sacrifice, we do this in order for us to be ready. Ready for what? For our death, for our particular judgement, for the final judgement, for that day when we will stand face to face with Jesus and He will reveal to us the beatific vision. It is in this moment that we will once and for all lay down our will completely just like Jesus, sacrificing all of our attachments in this life to the Father, including our attachment to our own life here on earth. In that very moment, Jesus will be there with us because He has gone before us in this very sacrifice and we can rest assured He will stand with us in it.

So how do we prepare ourselves, how do we imitate Jesus’ great sacrifice of His human will? It all starts with prayer, so that we can know what is God’s will. Knowledge of God’s will gives us direction. We must also learn to trust in God, more than we trust in ourselves. This is the process of our purification and sanctification. Every time we sacrifice our own will in order to do God’s will, we imitate Jesus, we follow Him along The Way, we become more Christ-like. This is the path to holiness, the path to heaven. The deepest act of love that we are able to express is the sacrifice of our will, along with the choice to trust in and live out God’s will alone.

At the end of our life, we will all have to hand over our will completely just like Jesus did on the cross, in order for us to enter heaven. This is why purgatory is such a great mercy and a shining example of God’s deep love for us. God allows us the opportunity to be purified of any remaining part of us that is still clinging to this world and desiring to have it our way, any last part of us that does not trust in Him. We will be purified of this before we enter heaven. Our soul cannot be completely united with the Holy Trinity without first laying down our will and choosing to trust in the Father’s will completely.

So then purgatory finishes the job, so to speak. As we spend our life learning to fully surrender our will to God, we must remember that we only have our time in this life to do so. In purgatory we can do nothing on our own to merit the graces of being able to lay down our will any longer. We stall out in our spiritual journey toward full union with God, with nothing more we can do ourselves to progress along The Way. It is only through the prayers and sacrifices of the Church and the Church Militant, those of us still living here on earth, that the souls in purgatory are able to move through purgatory into complete union with God in heaven.

This final surrender of purgatory is an experience of complete powerless, we can do nothing more. With this comes the pains of purgatory that the saints speak of. To have been given the beatific vision, and for the veil to be removed completely, we will yearn for God and complete union with Him with all of our being. This is written into our very hearts. We were created by God and our deepest desire is to be in complete union with Him, nothing less than that will truly satisfy us. At our death, we will see and know God fully, and yet if we go to our death still clinging to our own way, to the things of this world, and to our life on earth, there will be nothing we can do to obtain that union. St John Vianney explains it very plainly, “The fire of Purgatory is the same as the fire of Hell; the difference between them is that the fire of Purgatory is not everlasting.” So the pains of both purgatory and hell are experienced from our seeing the beatific vision and yet being separated from God; from what we now know fully to be true and good. In hell it is an eternal pain because separation from God is our final destination, but in purgatory the pains are temporary because our final destination is heaven.

We all will die one day. And like everything else in life that we know we will undergo, it is important to prepare ourselves. We cannot know when or how we will die, but we can still prepare. When we face our Maker, we will be asked to hand over our will completely to the Father, so that we may enter heaven. The more we practice doing God’s will in this life, despite our own opposing human will, the better prepared we will be to accept, embrace and unite ourselves completely with the will of God at our death, all so that we may enjoy life eternal with God in heaven.