The Whole Attention of Vigilance

If the spirit of sacrifice is not growing in you, Christ is not growing in you, no matter how ardently you may think of him or how eloquently you may speak of him.  But if day after day your life gathers to a culmination of sacrifice, then it is certain that Christ waxes strong in you.

A sacrifice is not, as so many people imagine, a mortification; it is not something that is meritorious according to its degree of unpleasantness; on the contrary, in real sacrifice, there is joy which surpasses all other joys, it is the crescendo and culmination of love.

What is a sacrifice?

A girl of eleven, asked to teach a child of four to "make a sacrifice," taught him to make the Sign of the Cross.  Asked why this should be a sacrifice, she answered with supreme wisdom, "Because for a little minute he gives all of himself to God."

For a little minute the child stops jumping and shouting, he stands still, puts his feet together, uses his mind and his hands and his voice for his Sign of the Cross.  He is offering himself to give honor to God....

When we make a sacrifice it is always thus, we have to give something up, not because it is a bad thing — for more often it is a good thing — but the offering of ourselves is a complete offering, it means a whole attention, a whole concentration, a whole donation.  In the Old Law God asked for the sacrifice of the first-fruits, the best lamb, the first of all the flocks.  He did not accept Cain's sacrifice, because it was not the best.  In the New Law he still asks for the first lamb of the flock, the richest fruit of the tree; he asks for Jesus Christ.