{"id":145254,"date":"2023-05-03T00:20:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-03T04:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/ask-a-priest-what-is-a-living-sacrifice\/"},"modified":"2024-09-17T11:40:48","modified_gmt":"2024-09-17T15:40:48","slug":"ask-a-priest-what-is-a-living-sacrifice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/ask-a-priest-what-is-a-living-sacrifice\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Ask a Priest: What Is a Living Sacrifice?&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<address>Q: What exactly is a living sacrifice? I&#8217;ve been asking some of my Protestant Christian friends and no one can give me an answer that I am satisfied with. \u00a0My dissatisfaction stems from the fact that I keep receiving conflicting answers. Thank you and y&#8217;all are in my prayers.<\/address>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Answered by Fr. John Bartunek, LC, S.Th.D.\n<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A: Let\u2019s start with the key biblical passage that made this phrase, \u201cliving sacrifice,\u201d famous. \u00a0It\u2019s from St. Paul\u2019s Letter to the Romans. \u00a0He is writing about God\u2019s great mercy, by which we have been saved from our sins. \u00a0He points out that the Old Covenant focused on attaining salvation (a right relationship with God) through the \u201cworks\u201d of the law. \u00a0Among those works, ritual sacrifices were front and center. \u00a0Those rituals involved taking some good thing upon which the People of Israel were dependent for their existence \u2013 mainly the grain from their harvests or animals from their flocks \u2013 and offering it to God.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b><i>The Purpose of Ritual Sacrifices<br \/>\n<\/i><\/b>According to the ritual, those offerings, or at least parts of them, had to be destroyed. \u00a0By destroying them \u2013 burning them on the altar, for example, or giving them to the priests, who had no farms or land of their own \u2013 faithful Israelites acknowledged that those good gifts, and their own lives which depended on those gifts, belonged first and foremost to God. \u00a0The sacrifices, then, were a form of worship, of gratefully and joyfully recognizing formally and regularly that the People of God were dependent on God for all things. \u00a0Even pagan religions practiced some form of ritual sacrifice that took the form of worship, though their understanding of the nature of God was distorted (which is why they sometimes offered human sacrifice, or focused on the details of the ritual offerings rather than the intention in the hearts of those who were making the offering). \u00a0In all cases, ritual sacrifices provided a way for believers to bring themselves, their work, and their communities into communion with God, to make them holy (the word sacrifice comes from \u201csacrum facere\u201d which is Latin for \u201cto make holy\u201d).<br \/>\n<b><i><br \/>\nA New Form of Worship<br \/>\n<\/i><\/b>St. Paul is explaining, in his Letter to the Romans, that the old way of making things holy, through ritual sacrifice, in which good things are destroyed \u2013 removed from human use \u2013 in order to honor God and acknowledge our dependence on him, is over. \u00a0Those old sacrifices were only shadows of the one true sacrifice, Jesus\u2019 self-offering on the Cross. \u00a0And it was Christ\u2019s sacrifice that makes us holy, not because of anything we can do or earn, but simply because God in his mercy has offered us this grace. \u00a0In the New Covenant, then, the role of sacrifice has changed. \u00a0Christ\u2019s sacrifice is now the source of our entering into a right relationship with God, not our sacrifices.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In Chapter 12, verses 1 and 2, of the Letter to the Romans, St. Paul draws a consequence from this new and definitive arrangement \u2013 he makes a \u201ctherefore\u201d statement:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><i>I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship<\/i><i>.<\/i><i> \u00a0Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.<br \/>\n<\/i><br \/>\nInstead of offering ritual sacrifices of grain and bulls in order gain God\u2019s favors, which is what happened in the Old Covenant, Christians are now called to a different mode of worship, a spiritual mode of worship. \u00a0We are called not to earn God\u2019s mercy by our offerings, but to express our gratitude and our love for God\u2019s mercy \u2013 which we have already received through our faith in Christ\u2019s definitive sacrifice on Calvary \u2013 through our new way of life. \u00a0In Christ, we have received the grace to live no longer centered on ourselves, but centered on Christ and his message and his wisdom and his love. \u00a0This new way of life, this new life in Christ (the life of the Beatitudes, the life exemplified by the saints) has become our way of deepening our union with God and worshipping him. \u00a0Instead of the ritual sacrifices of the Old Covenant, we are now engaged in the great adventure of making our entire lives into a living sacrifice, an entire life \u201cmade holy\u201d in Christ to give glory to God and to lead us to the fulfillment of everlasting union with him in heaven.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><b><i>A Better Sacrifice<br \/>\n<\/i><\/b>So you see, a living sacrifice is a different mode of worshipping God, a mode made possible only because in Christ we have been given grace, an interior renewal, that gradually transforms our minds, hearts, and emotions, from within. \u00a0And this much more pleasing to God than the old ritual sacrifices, because, in the end, he is interested not just in our external actions (ritual sacrifices), but in our friendship. \u00a0A Christian, making a sincere, decent, and consistent effort to live the new life in Christ, is offering a living sacrifice each moment of every day, worshipping God in everything they do.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">A lot more could be said. \u00a0In fact, a whole literature on the nature of sacrifice has developed among theologians and anthropologists over the last few decades. \u00a0But I think this should be enough to give you some clear reference points. \u00a0I hope it helps. \u00a0God bless you!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Q: What exactly is a living sacrifice? I&#8217;ve been asking some of my Protestant Christian friends and no one can give me an answer that I am satisfied with. \u00a0My [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":362,"featured_media":145952,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[3718],"tags":[3849],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-145254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ask-a-priest","tag-general"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"","pp_force_visibility":null,"pp_subpost_visibility":null,"pp_inherited_force_visibility":null,"pp_inherited_subpost_visibility":null,"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v28.8 (Yoast SEO v28.8) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>&quot;Ask a Priest: What Is a Living Sacrifice?&quot; - Regnum Christi<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.regnumchristi.com\/en\/ask-a-priest-what-is-a-living-sacrifice\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"&quot;Ask a Priest: What Is a Living Sacrifice?&quot;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Q: What exactly is a living sacrifice? 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He was an assistant publisher of the National Catholic Register and Faith &amp; Family magazine and an editor of the Zenit news agency\u2019s English edition. He has written for\u00a0SpiritualDirection.com\u00a0and\u00a0ePriest. Fr. McIlmail also worked in spiritual retreats in the Northeast, New England, the Midwest, and the South\u00a0and assisted with mission work in Mexico. Born in Philadelphia, he worked in journalism and was active in the pro-life movement before entering the novitiate of the Legion of Christ in 1992. 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Edward McIlmail, LC","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/485147bd811c2a8642adf1f1806f85f0adef2b00ef8ccabc9b46f8420af19e16?s=96&d=blank&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/485147bd811c2a8642adf1f1806f85f0adef2b00ef8ccabc9b46f8420af19e16?s=96&d=blank&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/485147bd811c2a8642adf1f1806f85f0adef2b00ef8ccabc9b46f8420af19e16?s=96&d=blank&r=g","caption":"Fr. Edward McIlmail, LC"},"description":"Fr. Edward McIlmail, LC, ordained to the priesthood in 2001, taught theology and Scripture at the then Mater Ecclesiae College in Rhode Island and is now a part-time chaplain at Overbrook Academy in Greenville, R.I. He holds degrees from Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Connecticut, the Regina Apostolorum Athenaeum in Rome, and Northwestern University in Illinois. 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