CHAPTER 1: THE MORNING OFFERING Beginning our day with a “Hello, Lord” is a good way to launch us quickly out of bed, like the soldier who overcomes his fear and leaps from the trench to the attack. To be able to get up and have one’s whole day ahead is a great gift. This in itself merits a thank you. Although incommensurate with such a great gift, what we can offer is a
“heroic minute” of punctuality. I realize that sanctity is not something abstract; nor is virtue, dedication, or vocation. What I have is today: a day filled with a thousand small details and perhaps from time to time something a little more momentous. The Lord has given me this day in order to sanctify myself in it. I must sanctify myself, then, by means of the concrete things of this day; in them I must live my dedication to and love for God. In them I can make a reality of my vocation and love my neighbors. They are the raw material out of which my sanctity is
made. A sports team feels a greater obligation to perform well when it is playing before its hometown fans; in similar fashion, the morning offering presents our Lord with the day’s work and thus obliges us at least to try to carry it out with greater nobility, elegance, and finesse. We might hesitate to make a morning offering, for fear that it is ridiculous to promise everything and when our contribution cannot but be small. “Forty centuries of glory gaze upon you,” Napoleon cried out to his soldiers before entering battle — but even that is small in comparison with the numbers who may gaze upon our daily lives. God, the angels, the saints, my fellow men are all going to be watching the battles of this new day. At the end of the day, however small my own battles and victories, I will be happy if I have “fought the good fight” (2 Timothy 4:7).
More than just an act, the morning offering is an attitude of service and dedication that begins the very moment we meet the new day. It means converting the commonplaces of another ordinary day into offerings and gifts for God. It carries yesterday’s resolutions into today. In this way our dedication to God takes on a corporeal, human dimension, and it is always a matter of beginning again. In the words of St. Josemaria: “Your interior life has to be just that: to begin . . . and to begin again.” A PLAN OF LIFE 4 HELPING YOU FIND GOD WHEREVER YOU ARE
The morning offering is something very personal. Each of us makes it in our own way, but we all say more or less the same thing: “Here I am Lord, because you have called me”; “I will serve you, I will be faithful to you”; and so on.
Our resolutions are always about a future we don’t yet possess. The morning offering includes a resolution that will be lived and realized that day. “Today” — what a marvelous word! Out of sleep awakens the joy of a new day filled with noble ideals. Today we may appreciate the purpose, the full joy of living, working, and speaking about God, of loving others and making them happy. This is the noble attitude of a child of God who wishes to show his love for his heavenly Father.