EP 2 - The Morning Offering
00:00 No, no, please! Long in, and home, no, no, please! Long in, and home, no! Please! Long in, and home, no more!
00:19 Long in, and no About 10 years ago, I heard a very interesting interview. The novelist Iris Murdoch was being interviewed and being asked what she did in between books.
00:42 When she finished one book, how long did it take before she began the next book? Did she go on a holiday, put a feat up in front of television, or actually a hobby, or whatever, how long before the end of one book and the beginning of the next.
00:57 And she looked at her watch and she said, Oh, I think about half a laugh. Half a laugh. Believe me, it takes me about three months to get over writing one book.
01:14 And even then, I'm exhausted at the end of it. But one thing I do like to do, I've got a hobby.
01:21 At least I had a hobby to come to an end now. That is ancestor hunting. hunting down my ancestors and it really is, it really is very exciting.
01:32 It's rather like becoming your own detective, looking for missing persons. Only the missing persons are your own ancestors. I was so enjoying it and then one day all of a sudden I got an awful joke.
01:49 I discovered that one of my ancestors had been murdered. Not only that, I discovered the name of the murderer. My ancestor was called Sir Nicholas Tempest, Bowman of the Forest of Poland, and the murderer was Henry VIII.
02:11 He was taking part in a completely peaceful pilgrimage from the north of England to protest about the king taking the title of supreme head of the Church in England, and also for putting down the monasteries, all the monasteries and priories and friaries, almost 900 in all and pocketing the money for
02:33 himself. So Henry VIII turned on him and had had him hang drawn and and he had an uncle of mine hanged drawn in quarter two and his wife was burned at the stake.
02:47 Twelve years after he died another reign of Terra began and it began under his daughter Elizabeth I. She passed an edict by which everyone had to go to a Protestant church every month and receive communion, and if they didn't, then they would have to pay a fine of £20.
03:10 But in modern money, $34,000, $3,000, $4,000, $5,000, it was an immense amount of money. And Catholics refused. Hence, they got the name recusants.
03:24 Because the word recusant comes from the Latin meaning a person who refuses. And they were thrown into jail, if they couldn't pay, and some of the conditions in jail were appalling.
03:39 The block house jail, for instance, in Hull. It was so low down, the dungeons were so low down, that when the tide came in twice a day, they were totally soaked.
03:50 At high tide, it came right up to their neck. And the priest, if they were caught, they were house. For him to say, Mass, then you were put to death as well.
04:06 I could go on and on, but there were terrible times, difficult times, and yet they persevered for hundreds of years in peonal times.
04:17 Come, rack, come rope. Now, you can see behind me, one of my ancestors, it is my great-grandfather. He, like his forebears, had been deprived of everything.
04:33 They just had to become agricultural workers or tradesmen of one sort or another. My family, they became carpenters, village carpenters.
04:45 Yet he was the Earl of Spenethorn. He was the last of the of Spenny Thorn and Middleton, and they went right back to William the Conqueror, deprived of everything.
05:03 So, when I came along, I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth, no manor house, no grounds, no money at all, nothing, there was nothing to be left to be except something far more valuable than money and that was an extremely rich spiritual inheritance that was handed on to me by my mother every
05:33 day morning and night prayers and one former prayer that was so very very important and that was the morning offering every day before we got out of bed even and then again at our bedside, and then again before we left our home to offer the whole day to God, to everything that we did in that day, and
05:59 the devotions to the rosary, the stations of the cross. Devotion to the saying, I'm sorry, I'm laughing, I was about to say, devotion to the sacred heart, excuse me, laughing, but something happened in our house when I was only about four years of age.
06:20 It was Christmas and a neighbor came in and they were given a drink and a mince pie and as they were talking they casually looked to the wall and there was a picture of the sacred heart.
06:32 You could see her shudder. She didn't know what to say or what to do. She said, who's that? Nobody said a word.
06:41 Nobody knew what to say. Fortunately there was in the room a budding theologian. I was about four at the time and my brother had explained to me only a short time ago who the sacred heart was.
06:56 She told me what the flames were, what they indicated, what they symbolized the flames around his heart. And so I pointed to the picture and I said that's Mr.
07:09 Loving and everybody, everybody collapsed in laughter. It diffused a very tricky situation and it became a sort of a family joke.
07:21 It was a joke until the parish breeze came round and he said, it's not funny, he's exactly right. The sacred heart is Mr.
07:32 Loving. In a time when everybody believed that God was Mr. policeman, that our Lord appeared to say Margaret Mary, to tell her that he was not Mr.
07:41 policeman, he was Mr. Loving, he was the sacred heart. And from that date forward, this devotion began to spread in the Catholic spirituality.
08:00 When you were taught to say your morning offering, you knew that you were offering the day to God and as you did so, everything that you said and did, you tried to do your best For him, and as you tried to do your best for him, then the love of the sacred heart, who wasn't just a picture of God in Carnot
08:31 , it was a picture of incarnate loving, then that loving would enter into your loving. As you tried to love God through all and everything that you do, the two became one.
08:50 It actually came to realize the two great pillars of our Catholic faith that stood out in bold relief in penal times.
09:00 They were one. The morning offering, where we offered ourselves to give everything to God and the other one was the mass.
09:11 The morning offering is when we continually offered ourselves to God and prepared to do so in the forthcoming day, the mass was when Jesus Christ, our Lord, became present in the act of offering Himself to God.
09:28 And the whole of the spiritual life was how the two gradually must come together and meet, all loving, merging, mixing, marrying with His to become one.
09:43 Now let my hands symbolize if you like two pillars. Now in your imagination put on top of those two pillars a triangle.
09:57 You've seen it in neoclassical architecture often enough to pillars with a triangle on top. That shows you everything.
10:09 It shows you as we try to give our all to God, then the love of God through the sacred heart, mix, merge, mingle together, marry, become one, and take us up and onwards into the life of the three in one, into the life of the Holy Trinity.
10:30 That sums up everything. And that's why our morning offering is so important and why I want to talk about it today.
10:42 In order to reinforce what I've said and understand it more deeply in biblical terms, let me take you back to early Christianity, incidentally how they're doing this all the time.
10:53 I'll be taking you back to the source and origin of authentic Catholic spirituality, right back at the beginning. And that's where we're going now.
11:02 Correction, we're going even further back. I want to go back, beyond the first Pentecost day, I want to go back to a little town in Nazareth, where St.
11:16 Anna and St. Joachim lived. They had a daughter, the daughter's name was Mary, and when she grew up, she was taught what with a very origin of our morning offering.
11:32 She was taught the shema, they called it the shema. Now I saw film recently, you may have seen one yourself, see it yourself.
11:39 It was a film about a Jewish girl in France when they were suffering from the German occupation. She was mixed up in resistance but somebody betrayed her to the Gestapo as she had to leave home, make for the Pyrenees to climb over this mountain range and into Spain and to safety.
12:05 As she was leaving, her mother was calling after, remember your shame, remember the shame, I remember, remember your shame on every day.
12:17 The shame was so important, the most important prayer, the Mary was taught as a young girl. But in that prayer, they had banished Jewish spirituality had managed to embody the greatest of all the commandments.
12:41 Remember once our Lord was stopped and the, I don't know if it was a lawyer or a Pharisee, I don't know quite who it was off hand, but he said, Lord, what is the greatest of the commandments?
12:55 And he said it is to love the Lord, your God, with your whole heart and your mind, with your whole body and soul, and with your whole strength.
13:06 Now that prayer was central to the Shema. You promised in the forthcoming day and in every day to try to love God, with your whole heart and mind, with your whole body and soul, with your whole strength.
13:24 Now, of course, Mary taught the Shema to her son to Jesus. He would have learnt this prayer at his mother's knee, and so would his disciples learn from their mother's tomb, for every Jewish child was taught the Shema.
13:40 Not only that, when Jesus began his public ministry, and as they travelled round, they said their Shema together in the morning, not only in the morning, but according to the custom, they went to the synagogue three times a day where they said they shayah.
13:57 At the time of Christ, there would be about 200 synagogues as well as the temple in Jerusalem, and together they would say they shayah.
14:09 They would say to the 9th hour, at the 10th hour, sorry, the 9th hour, the 12th hour, and the 9th hour, that was 9th, let me get this quite clear, at 9 in the morning, midday, and at 3 in the afternoon.
14:27 Why? Because that was the time when the priests were making their physical offerings of lamb, She go through or whatever in the temple so that they could be united with the offerings going on in the temple Weather and I don't know if you've noticed this but although in the New Testament you see Mary
14:56 our lady for instance with Joseph making offerings in the temple and Even the disciples. Yes Nowhere do you see our Lord Himself, Jesus, offering worship in the temple, I mean offering a physical sacrifice in the temple.
15:21 And the reason why is this? It was because He had come to bring a new form of offering, an offering that he called an offering in spirit and in truth.
15:40 Remember him now? I've had a well-signed talking to the Samaritan woman. Do we worship here? On Mount Gerasim or do we worship in Jerusalem she said and Jesus said the time is coming when you will worship in a new temple.
15:57 Is a temple that would not be built by human hands and they would be there would be a new worship in spirit and in truth.
16:13 Jesus Christ our Lord would be that new temple, and we would be drawn up into that new temple to offer ourselves our love to God to gaze in, or the glory of three in one in with and through Christ he was the new temple.
16:39 In fact that's where the word contemplation comes. The word contemplation is two words put together on the meaning with temple, meaning temple.
16:55 Now Christ was the new temple and now we worship in with and through the temple and what do we do?
17:02 We contemplate with him the glory and the majesty of God, and because this cannot be seen by outsiders, it came to be called mystical contemplation, that we participate in when we have been sufficiently prepared and purified to be united with him.
17:25 Now, the whole of the spiritual life, the whole of the spiritual journey, is a journey into this new temple, the new temple of Jesus Christ our Lord.
17:38 And it is a long journey, it can be a punishing journey, but it is a long way, it is called the way, the mystic way.
17:49 Remember the first word used to describe the first Christians was the way, they were in the way. They were travelling in the way, the mystic way.
18:02 We should Jesus Christ our Lord, the new high priest in Him. But in order to do this, They had to be purified.
18:14 How can we selfless human beings be united with the all-holy loving God? And body in Jesus Christ our Lord. Jesus Christ risen and glorified the sacred heart, whatever you want to call Him is doing one thing and one thing all the time.
18:32 He is loving and loving and loving and loving. He can't stop loving. God is love Saint John said more precisely God is loving.
18:44 Some years ago I had dinner with friends in London and after the meal I was walking out and their father who was over from Ireland staying with them was busy digging in the garden.
18:58 I don't think he wanted to be interrupted but I interrupted him by asking him the obvious. I said, Oh, and what are you doing?
19:07 Now, I won't attend to use his action. Sorry, I won't attend to imitate his accent. But he said this. He said, I do be digging the garden.
19:25 A month later, when I was talking in Ireland in Dublin, I met her headmistress who taught Irish, and I told her the story, and I said, what was he trying to tell me?
19:36 What was he saying? I'd never come across this expression before, and she said, he is using what we call in Irish, the present continuing tense.
19:49 You don't have it in English, and it means this. It means that he was trying to tell you, I have been digging, I am digging and when you stop asking the obvious, I will continue to dig.
20:11 Perfect way of expressing the Aramae, perhaps as my first doctor believed, the Irish are the one of the lost tribes of Israel.
20:23 God is love and God is loving all the time. In the last talk I gave, I said that the God is loving and he cannot stop loving.
20:38 I said but the only thing that is wrong is not with God, it is with us because look, that's how we start at the beginning of the journey.
20:47 Look at my fist tight, locked up in ourselves. That's us, thanks to original sin, we're locked up in ourselves, self-sent and self-righteous, self-indulgent.
20:59 And we cannot be united to perfect loving, no matter how strong or powerful that love is, not even God's love can get through, unless we really choose to receive his love.
21:15 Love cannot be forced, remember. And so now this is the whole of the spiritual life. God is endlessly loving us.
21:25 What we, what must we do? Well St. Peter told the crowds on the first Pentecost day, remember? The crowds have come to Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost.
21:39 Now Pentecost was the feast that celebrated the moment when God gave the tablets of Lord to Moses on Mount Sinai.
21:49 But now this was the date, this was the feast for the new Lord to be promulgated, which was not going to be written on stone tablets but on people's hearts in the people's hearts.
22:03 It was the love of God. The love of the risen and glorified Christ and Peter and his disciples who everybody thought were drunk, they weren't drunk, they weren't intoxicated yet but not with liquor.
22:16 They were intoxicated with the love of God and the crowds could see this and they say, what's going on? What's going on?
22:22 And they said, haven't you heard about Jesus? His risen. He's glorified. He now, he's told us that only a short time ago.
22:31 He said now is the time when he would be sending out the Holy Spirit. Remember the Holy Spirit promised by the prophets from time immemorial when it's happening now today.
22:43 And the rule got so excited. They said, tell us what must we do?" And St Peter said, said, you must repent, be baptized, have your sins forgiven.
22:57 Now, in Aramaid, which was the language of say Peter was using, there is no such word for somebody who has repented.
23:09 There is only a word for somebody who is repenting in the process of repenting. So he was calling on them not just to repent and be baptized but to be repent, to be baptized and then continually to repent.
23:25 Continually in other words keep trying to turn and open yourself in order to receive the love of God. It is an ongoing process not just for weeks or months for years but for a lifetime.
23:41 This is our calling to continually repent, continually open, continually turn to God. And this process begins with our morning offering, when we offer in the day ahead to love God in all and everything we do, that's the love that opens us to receive His love.
24:00 And that goes on continually. However, it is a hard and it is a difficult journey. And this was made plain to the first Christians who after the resurrection, after Pentecost Day, they continued to say that shame, but of course it was Christianized.
24:24 In other words, they didn't just pray that in all and everything that they did in the forthcoming day, they would love God with a heart and mind that body and soul and that whole being, they would not only do that, but they would do it in the new temple.
24:48 In other words, in with and through Jesus Christ. They still, therefore, went to the synagogue for a time, for a considerable time.
25:04 In fact, if you remember the story of St. Paul when he was persecuting Christians, he knew where to find them, he knew where they were, whatever city he went to, all he needed to do, tell up at the synagogue at the 9th hour, the 12th, sorry, the midday, and three in the afternoon, and they come out,
25:21 thank you very much, he grabbed them, he knew where they'd be. They would continue to say their new shayma, offering themselves to God in, with and through Jesus Christ our Lord.
25:34 Now, when they set it at 9 o'clock at midday and 3 o'clock, they did not look back to identify themselves with the physical offerings that took place in the temple.
25:48 Because there was a new temple, in any way the old temple would soon be destroyed. They wanted to identify with the old temple, but just to give them all a reality check that they were not just being taken up into some beautiful but mystical loving of God in Christ in the world to come, participated,
26:17 at least in some measure in this life, to give them a reality check. They were taught at nine o'clock, you must meditate on the condemnation of Christ.
26:28 On his flocking, scourging at the pillar, founding of Thorns, a midday, he meditate on him being hammered to death on the cross, and three in the afternoon on his death so you remember what Christ suffered in order to make it possible for us to be taken up now into his risen glory as the beginning of
26:53 a journey into eternity from here to eternity. That's where we're going in with and through Christ. But it came at a great cost.
27:03 And this was a reality check to remind them too that they would have to carry a daily cross. I preach Christ and Christ crucified St.
27:12 Paul said, no mistake about it, you are being asked to carry a cross. Not because suffering is good in itself, it is not, nor are you to start looking for crosses and suffering to take upon yourself, but as you are being purified, as you are coming closer to the love of God, then the light of God's love
27:36 , and we're going to see this as this course unfolds, the light of God's love shows you up and shows in you all the sin, all the selfishness that is preventing you from being united with the love of Christ to be made one with Him and go to the Father in with and through to contemplate His glory.
28:01 So it's going to involve suffering, it will suffer darkness and suffering. Now St. John of the Cross said, and we'll back to this later, that in his day, 90% of people who start prayer, oh everything is lovely, meditate, the life of prayer, everything is wonderful, and all of a sudden the Holy Spirit
28:21 says, you are quite clearly showing that you want to love me, I will take you therefore on for purification and we're drawn out of meditation to the beginning of contemplation where country to what we expect, The light of God has actually high, the light of God's love has highlighted our sinfulness.
28:42 And so purification begins, we're going to put a magnifying glass on this moment in the spirit of life. Why? Because it's so important because the vast majority of people, when this begins to happen, they run away.
28:56 They weren't expecting this. They were expecting lovely experiences, transcendental awareness and quite a full union and all that sort of thing on the country.
29:08 They have to be purified first before going any further. Saint John of the Cross said in his day, 90% of good Christians who come to this point where they're being prepared for union with Christ and his love, they all run away, not necessarily giving up their faith but just Mass on Sunday, Sunday morning
29:29 Catholics, nominal Catholics, praying yes in extremists when we want something prayer-appetitioned but they don't go any further. In this course I want to be showing how we are to go further at this point when the Holy Spirit leaders on and on and on.
29:49 But first we must experience something that we learned school in physics. Do you remember when we were asked, do you know what happens when an irresistible force hits an immovable object?
30:03 If you've forgotten, I'll tell you, heat is generated. So when the irresistible force of God's love hits the immovable object of our sinfulness, then heat is generated, it is the purifying, heat of the Holy Spirit.
30:22 Yes, we've been baptized, but read your scriptures is followed by another baptism and a baptism of fire in which we are purified and refined to be united with Christ.
30:36 Unlike things cannot be united, can't happen impossible. So be prepared from the start. I'm telling you now, Along the way, when you have shown you really do want to love God, then God will send his Holy Spirit to draw your love onward so that it can be prepared and purified to unite you, Jesus Christ
31:01 our Lord in His risen glory, to be united with His contemplation of the Father in this life and in the next life, to go on and on forever into God's plan for us into what saying, Paul, Paul we have seen called the Mysterion.
31:18 That's why we were created to share in that life and love to eternity, and it all begins here and now and it begins with your morning offering.
31:29 So if you want to begin again and start your life again, I say, yes, I have been flandering. I want to begin again now, begin with your morning offering.
31:40 I'm going to read it out before we finish so you can write it down and you can start there. So our journey begins today for those who have been languishing, running away or want to start again and re-invigorate their lives.
31:58 I think it was about 20 years ago, somebody may correct me, I'm not very good at the dates connected with pubes for some reason or other.
32:07 But I certainly know this. It was Pope Benedict who was the first to go online on a computer. And he contacted a man and a woman who said to him, holy father, we have a problem.
32:29 Can you help us with it? Can you answer our little problem? It's a spiritual problem. We found it very difficult to pray.
32:37 He said, you see, it's okay for monks and hermits and so forth and people in monasteries, but you know, we have six children.
32:45 Fred, I mean, he works for you know, sometimes nine hours a day with overtime. We need the money. It's hard work.
32:55 We found it difficult to pray, and he said to them, say, your morning offering, God understands off your day to Him, then whatever you do in that day, the way you love one another, the way you love your children, you look after them, you feed them, you close them, all that you're doing for them, therefore
33:18 becomes a prayer, that becomes a prayer that helps you to be united with Christ, to unite with Him. That's what you're mourning offering.
33:30 Is therefore to lead you on into Christ so that as you are doing this in your day, the love of the risen Lord, the love of the sacred heart, who is a wonderful representation, if modern times, of the not just incarnate loving, calling, loving, enters into your loving and the two, the two become as one
33:53 . Offer up everything. Decure those, Jean Baptiste Vienne used to say, everything in your day you do not offer up is wasted.
34:03 So waste of time, they're precious. My mom used to tell me the same thing. She's even little tiny things in your day.
34:12 Do them as best you can as well as you can, whether you're playing games with eating or eating, remember eating or drinking, Zen Paul said, do it all for the glory of God, all these little things of the day, create a tapestry of love that you offer to God in, with and through Christ, and in doing it,
34:29 Christ love it, entering into you." My mother said, in this way you become a little priest she said, you become like rumple still skin, turning ordinary things into gold.
34:52 And she also taught me something else, too. She said, don't just say your morning offering in the morning if you pop into a church, If you have a quiet moment, say it again because remember the words of Jesus at the lower supper.
35:14 He said, if you love me, then you will keep my commandments. Now in the morning prayer, we promised a love God by trying to keep the first moment in which Jesus said all the others are contained.
35:40 So in these moments, say your Christian, your Catholic mantra again, slowly and prayerfully, and as you say to God, I offer my day, my life, all that I am to you, I offer you my heart, my mind, my body, my soul, all my strength, as you are doing this, then he will fulfill the promise he made at the last
36:10 supper. And remember what he said. If you keep my commandments, then I will send another advocate to be with you.
36:22 No, not just to be with you, but to be within you. I will not leave you orphans, he said. I am in the Father and the Father is in me and we are coming to you and we will make our home in you.
36:42 Make your home in me and I will make my home in you. What a profound meditation coming out of our morning offering.
37:03 Now to end with, I'm going to read you the morning offering again and I'm going to read it so that you can write it down so that you can use it so that you've got a good example.
37:18 You may have your own, of course, and may have been doing it for years, but for those of you who haven't, I'm going to read out this morning offering now.
37:30 There's a slight change in it because the early Christians not only Christianized the early Shema by adding in with and through Jesus Christ our Lord, but as time went on, they added a reference to the sacred mysteries of the Mass, to the Passion of Christ, and to the Mass, where those sacred mysteries
37:55 are celebrated in liturgy, so that we can identify them. The early Jews wanted to identify with the offerings made in the Old Temple.
38:08 We want to be identified with the offerings made in the new temple which is Christ. And so this has been brought in to the morning offering that I am now about to read for you.
38:26 Father, Abba, I offer myself to you this day with all my mind and heart, with with all my body and soul, and with my whole strength.
38:43 In all that I say, and all that I do, may my offering be united with Christ's perfect sacrifice made on the cross, that is continually celebrated each day in the mass.
39:03 I make this offering in with and through Jesus Christ our Lord.
39:15 So gradually, our spirituality is symbolized by the two pillars, the pillars of our morning offering and the love of God and then they come together in the mass.
39:30 So when we go to Mass on Sunday, we offer all that we've been offering during the week, the little sacrifices that we have made in order to do all in everything as best we can in his name.
39:48 That is why perhaps one of the greatest liturgists of the you that your whole lives become the mass, the place where you are continually offering yourself to God in and through Jesus Christ, who is our Lord.
40:19 Next time I'm going to continue laying the foundations for our life of prayer, laying the foundations for our spiritual life.
40:34 Meanwhile, let me leave you with the words of St. Teresa of Adela. When she said, there is only one way to perfection.
40:51 There is, she said, only one way to union with God and that is to pray, if anyone points in another direction, then they are misleading you and they are on them.