Patience
Thoughts on the Patient Endurance of Sorrows and Sufferings
THE SPIRIT OF OBLATION
According to the law of Moses (Exod. xiii. 12), the first-born son among the Jews was offered up by his parents to God in the Temple. Thus, Mary, on the day of her purification, offered Jesus as a sacrifice to His eternal Father. She gave to God the thing she valued most. What a supremely pleasing sacrifice this was to God! What graces it procured for Mary, though it cost her dear! She saw, no doubt, with agonizing foresight, that her offering was but the forerunner of the terrible sacrifice of Calvary, in which she herself should have so large a part, and in which her Son should offer Himself up a bleeding Victim to His Father for the sins of men.
My Queen and my Mother, Mary Immaculate!
By the offering you made of your divine Son, enable me to make an unreserved oblation of myself to God, that He may do with me in all things as He pleases. Help me too, to assist frequently and with devotion at the sacrifice of the Mass and to derive great fruit from being present at it.
In imitation of our Mother Mary, we should offer to God the first fruits of the day, by making, the first thing on wakening, our Morning Offering to the Sacred Heart, of all the thoughts, words, actions, sufferings of the day. We should begin the day with morning prayer and meditation, and, if possible, by hearing Mass. We should offer to God our ordinary actions. "Whether you eat or drink, or whatsoever else you do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Cor. x. 3]). Purity of intention makes our smallest actions meritorious in the eyes of God.
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Compiled and Edited by Rev. F. X. Lasance
Author of "My Prayerbook," etc.
1937, Benziger Brothers
Printers to the Holy Apostolic See
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