Quotes Worth Contemplating for Lent

There is no question that sacrifices, little acts of self-denial, voluntary mortifications, etc., are an integral part of Catholic spirituality. Our Lord told Bl. Anna Maria Tiagi, “Those who wish to follow My way must renounce their own will everywhere and in everything. Do what you do not wish to do; leave undone that which you wish to do. One act of violence to oneself of this kind is much more pleasing to Me than an entire year of penances” (Spes Nostra [SN], 123).

But it is worth asking — why? Why are such acts pleasing to Him? Why is it that God desires our sacrifices?

Natural Sacrifices

The concept of sacrifice is easy enough to understand on the natural level. When Timmy and Joey are fighting over who gets to play with the teddy bear; or (fast forward ten years) when Tim and Joe are fighting over who gets to ride in the front seat; or (fast forward five more years) when Timothy and Joseph are fighting over who gets to invite the neighbor girl to the dance — one of them may choose to do the more virtuous thing and make a sacrifice for his brother’s sake. When a man quits his job because it is taking too much of his time and attention away from his family, he is making a sacrifice for his family: he prefers to suffer a little for their good, because he loves them more than he loves himself. We could multiply examples endlessly.

Such natural sacrifices are obvious acts of love (a genuine love of benevolence) towards another person made in order to enrich the other person in some way.

Supernatural sacrifices, though, are quite different.

Benefits of Supernatural Sacrifices

In the spirit of countless saints before him, the Servant of God, Fr. William Doyle, S.J., reminds us of the mysterious interplay between mastery of self and docility to God. “Look upon nothing as too small to offer to God,” he said. “Big sacrifices do not come very often, and generally we are too cowardly to make them when they do. But little ones are as plentiful as blackberries in September and stiffen the moral courage by the constant repetition of them, to do, in the end, even heroic things” (SN, 125). Stiffening the moral courage is certainly one benefit that comes to us through the practice of making sacrifices. When our will is strengthened, our ability to say “no” to ourselves — that is, to our selfish or merely trivial inclinations and wishes — enhances our ability to say “yes” to God.

Furthermore, there is a heavenly reward attached to our sacrifices. St. Therese said, “The more sacrifices cost you, the more you must concentrate on making them cheerfully. Never miss an opportunity. If you only knew the value Jesus sets on even the tiniest act of self-denial, you would grasp at every opportunity like a miser going after treasure” (SN, 123).

There is also a question of giving pleasure to our good God by our little deeds of self-conquest. It was His grace which inspired them, after all. To cooperate with His grace is a clear sign of our loyalty. This is why Mother Agnes of Jesus (St. Therese’s blood sister, Pauline), said,

We must not turn away from the opportunities of little daily martyrdom which present themselves. We run away when we do not do all that God asks of us, when we resist His grace and inspirations, when we close our eyes so as not to see the light which clearly reveals some sacrifice to be made, some duty to perform. Take the sword bravely; give yourself neither rest nor truce in the battles of life. This is how we obtain true peace, and how our secret martyrdom will become glorious. (SN, 123)

According to Fr. Doyle, there is even an element of reparation in our sacrifices: “Remember above all that even one small victory makes up for a hundred defects” (SN, 125).

Making sacrifices is a practice of concrete benefit to ourselves. It makes sense, then, why we should desire to make them. But we still have not answered the question of why God desires that we should make them, seeing that He cannot in any way be said to benefit from them personally.

What God Does Desire

It is not that God desires our sacrifices per se. He desires our love.

First, God desires a love that acknowledges all He has done for us. “I think it evident,” says Fr. Doyle,

that, in these awful days of sin and hatred of God, our Blessed Lord wants to gather round Him a legion of chosen souls who will be devoted, heart and soul, to His interests, and upon whom He may always count for help and consolation. Souls who will not ask, “How much must I do?” but rather “How much can I do for His love?” A legion of souls who will give and not count the cost, whose only pain will be that they cannot do more and give more and suffer more for Him Who has done so much for them. In a word, souls who are not as the rest of men, for their watchword is sacrifice and not self-comfort. (SN, 122)

Yes, there is merit attached to this, but the this is the love permeating the action of self-denial far more than the action itself. “Be generous with God,” Sr. Louise Vanderschriek urges us. “The good Master will, even in this life, generously repay the little sacrifices you make for His love” (SN, 124). Do you see? For His love.

St. Therese is emphatic on this point. “True love thrives on sacrifice,” she said. “The more the soul denies itself its natural inclinations, the stronger and more disinterested becomes its tenderness” (SN, 125).

Why is that?

Let us hear from the ever-witty Chesterton:

If ever that rarer sort of romantic love…falls out of fashion and is treated as fiction, we may see some such misunderstanding as that of the modern world about asceticism…. Men will ask what selfish sort of woman it must have been who ruthlessly exacted tribute in the form of flowers, or what an avaricious creature she can have been to demand solid gold in the form of a ring; just as they ask what cruel kind of God can have demanded sacrifice and self-denial. They will have lost the clue to all that lovers have meant by love; and will not understand that it was because the thing was not demanded that it was done. (Saint Francis of Assisi, 80–81)

It Is the Love that Matters

The secret behind God’s desire for our sacrifices has to do with the very nature of love, which St. Francis de Sales defines as a movement of complacency in the good (cf. Treatise on the Love of God, 196). When we deny ourselves sugar in our coffee, it is not because we want there to be enough sugar left for Our Lord to be able to enjoy some in His. It is because we want to remind Him, reassure Him with all sincerity that the tiny bit of pleasure we would have gotten from that sugar — the teensy bit of complacency we would have taken in it — is nothing for us compared to our joy, our delight in the sweetness we have found in Him.

“My Jesus,” our sacrifices say to Him in actions more magnificent than any words, “I love you more.”

The inverse is equally true: it is not that Our Lord so loves to see us suffer that we therefore should strive our utmost to oblige Him. Hardly! It is, rather, that Our Lord so loves to see us happy that when we show that we are seeking our happiness in Him instead of in His creatures, He is delighted beyond anything we can imagine. Fr. Matthias Joseph Scheeben expressed this mystery most beautifully when he said:

Every glance towards God, every virtuous act performed in grace, and every sigh of the soul that loves God, even though so light as a hair, becomes an arrow that wounds, not the unstable heart of man, but the eternal and constant Heart of God. Every step that you take in the pathway of grace is so beautiful and lovely that God, beholding you, exclaims, How beautiful are thy steps in shoes, O prince’s daughter! (Cant. 7:1). Every word that you address to God is so dear and precious that it brings down upon you His richest blessings, as the Psalmist sings: Grace is poured abroad in thy lips; therefore hath God blessed thee forever (Ps. 44:3). Nothing in the beloved is insignificant to the lover; nothing in the beloved soul is insignificant to the loving God. Here each and every thing is great because it gains God’s love for us. (SN, 19)

Fr. Paul of Moll echoes this sentiment: “God is astonishing in His love. The more we love Him, the more He loves us. He pays us back tenfold the love which we have for Him” (SN, 25).

Let us be convinced with Fr. William Doyle and all the saints that “the more this generous spirit of self-sacrifice springs up in your heart, the nearer and dearer will you become to Jesus. Love for Love. Blood for Blood. Life for Life. Will you give Him all? What do the sacrifices of the past cost you now? The future may never come, and so you have only the suffering of the moment to bear for His dear sake” (SN, 123).

And this Lent especially, as well as throughout the rest of our lives besides, let us exert ourselves to make all the sacrifices we can, confident that God does indeed desire them.