A morning offering

I had said that I would start a series of posts on prayer, after finishing up the short commentaries. Here’s a nice, old morning offering, to begin the day with:

O Lord God Almighty, behold me prostrate before Thee in order to appease Thee, and to honour Thy Divine Majesty, in the name of all creatures. But how can I do this who am myself but a poor sinner? Nay, but I both can and will, knowing that Thou dost make it Thy boast to be called Father of mercies, and for love of us hast given Thy only-begotten Son, Who sacrificed Himself upon the Cross, and for our sake doth continually renew that sacrifice of Himself upon our altars. And therefore do I – sinner, but penitent – before Thee, and, with the love of angels and of all Thy Saints, and with the tender affection of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer to Thee in the name of all creatures the Masses which are now being celebrated, together with all those which have been celebrated, and which shall be celebrated to the end of the world. Moreover, I intend to renew the offering of them every moment of this day and of all my life, that I may thereby render to Thy infinite Majesty an honour and a glory worthy of Thee, thus to appease Thy indignation, to satisty Thy justice for our many sins, to render Thee thanks in proportion to Thy benefits, and to implore Thy mercies for myself and for all sinners, for all the faithful, living and dead, for Thy whole Church, and principally for its visible Head, the Sovereign Pontiff, and lastly for all poor schismatics, heretics, and infidels, that they also may be converted and save their souls.

And an addendum for priests:

Eternal Father, I offer to Thee the sacrifice which Thy beloved Son Jesus made of Himself upon the Cross, and which He now renews upon this altar; I offer it to Thee in the name of all creatures, together with the Masses which have been celebrated, and which shall be celebrated in the whole world, in order to adore Thee, and to give Thee the honour which Thou dost deserve, to render to Thee due thanks for Thy innumerable benefits, to appease Thy anger, which our many sins have provoked, and to give Thee due satisfaction for them; to entreat Thee also for myself, for the Church, for the whole world, and for the blessed souls in purgatory. Amen.

A short commentary should inevitably follow. The Catholic must live in prostration (in the Latin West, this is kneeling with the head bowed) before the Holy One, and so a day appropriately starts with a spiritual abnegation before the divine majesty. The language of appeasement is priestly language, which takes for granted that sin exists and that sin offends the God Who loves us; consequently He Who is offended must be appeased. Abnegation is again a priestly act; one of the famous sayings of the priestly soul of S. John the Baptist was, ‘He must increase, I must decrease.’ A God of justice will see offence acknowledged, confessed, punished. If that sounds horrid, we are not taking sufficient account of the seriousness of disordered sin in the history of the Hebrew and Christian religions. God brings order to creation, He even asked men and women in Adam to continue to bring order to creation, but we sinned and brought disorder and disharmony. This requires a daily repentance of sin, a daily conversion to God and the appeasement that is only completely made by the death of the Sinless One upon the Cross. And then we (all of us, clergy and laity) become the priests of the created world, taking up once more the original command to Adam to consecrate creation to the Holy One.

And that brings us to the reason for this prayer. Although most Catholics of the Western Church do not go to daily Mass, they are encouraged to do so, and this prayer is a preparation for attending a daily Mass. Within the ritual of the Mass stands the old, rugged Cross and the Mass was designed from the beginning to apply the merits of the Crucified One to men and women of every successive age of the Church’s history. Our daily acts of repentance and conversion to God are gathered together in what we call the penitential rite at the beginning of Mass, and (given that we confess sin regularly to a priest) this ritual allows us to stand blameless before the Holy One, before we receive the lessons of the readings and the Gospel and are admitted to Holy Communion. So, even if we are sinners, we are penitent sinners, and seek the appeasement that is brought to us by the Sacrifice of Christ, which Sacrifice we partake of in Holy Communion.

Making an offering is a priestly act that every Christian must perform, and this short morning offering gives us the words for it. We make offering to God of ourselves, and of all creation, for the whole Church, for those who have separated themselves from the Church (heretics and schismatics) and those who have either not approached the Church or have rejected her (infidels). It is still very much the teaching of the Church that, in so far as salvation may only be had through Christ and the Church is His instrument for that salvation, salvation may only be had through the Church.

The added prayer for the priest is very similar, but it is directed towards the actual offering of the Sacrifice of Christ, which only the ordained priest may perform.