I was at my first assignment, and we had a parishioner there. He served daily Mass, a really wonderful guy, and he was a SWAT team member for the city. He was also a police officer. He was a pretty tough guy, with a tough disposition. He told me that he would always start his morning like this. He would kneel down next to his bed and say, “Good morning, Lord. Reporting for duty.” And that’s how he would start his day.
I think it’s really important for us, in Catholic language we would call that a morning offering, to every morning offer ourselves to God. He found his own unique way of doing that, “Good morning, Lord. Reporting for duty,” and his whole day then was dedicated to God.
One of the things that I love doing in the morning is, first thing, I wake up, go to my crucifix and kiss the feet of the cross. Then I lay down prostrate on the ground, give my life to God and I say, “Lord, I give my life to you. Please use me as your instrument and shape me more and more according to your will.” Now, you might not be able to get down on the ground and prostrate, or you might not even be able to kneel, but find some way to give your life to God every morning.
We hear about this in the first reading. Isaiah is prophesying, and he’s saying that the Lord will be a servant to God. He will give his life as a ransom for the many. And if you can’t kneel, or if you can’t prostrate, find some way to give yourself to God.
I think another wonderful way to do that is simply to open your arms. A police officer, if they want someone to surrender, what does the person hopefully do? You put your hands up, right? You open your arms. We do this when we pray in the Orans position at the Our Father. We open our arms up to God, and we give ourselves to Him. This is something we can not only do in the morning, but throughout the day.
There are probably many times throughout the day where we need to surrender. We’ve done it in the morning, we’ve given ourselves to God, and then at some point during our day, we take it back, right? We’re like, “I’m going to take care of my life.”
I think about all the different choices that we have to make every single day. Just think about the sheer number of choices we make. And sometimes too many choices can be exhausting, right? If you think about it, it even comes down to, “What do you want to do for dinner tonight?” What’s the response usually? “I don’t know. What do you want to do?” Or, “I don’t care. What do you want to do?” We just don’t care anymore because we’ve made too many choices all throughout the day. I think, especially as Americans, we have the ability to make so many choices that it becomes overwhelming.
But if we can make one choice, and that choice is, “I give my will to you, Father”, and if we allow God to make the choices for us, and He does. He makes it pretty clear throughout the day, if we stop and surrender to Him, “What is it, God, that you want me to do at this moment?” One of the things He might want us to do is simply to do the will of another. Maybe if your spouse asks you to do something, just do that will right away. If your parents ask you to do something, do that right away. But only if it’s the will of God. And I say this especially to kids when they come to confession, do everything your parents tell you to do, unless they are asking you to do something that is completely against the will of God. Do everything your parents tell you.
This can extend to work, and it can extend to all different areas of our lives. But when we do the will of God in our lives, we will find peace.
If we say, like in the Psalm, “Here I am, Lord. I come to do your will.” If we just make that one decision in our day, everything else will fall into place.
Now John the Baptist discovered what his purpose was. He knew that his will was to point to Jesus when He came. He knew because the Holy Spirit had been prompting him and telling him when the Son of God appears, you will baptize Him, and you will see the heavens open, the Holy Spirit descending like a dove, and the voice of the Father saying, “This is my beloved Son.” As John the Baptist saw this happening, he was able to say, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.”
Isaiah prophesied that God has been shaping us from the womb to do His will. From the very moment we were conceived, He has been molding us and shaping us to be His servants.
In our lives, I think the great sin, especially for us in America, is self-reliance. Self-reliance is when we make everything happen in our lives. We provide for ourselves. We do what we want. And, in that self-reliance, we get exhausted, because we’re trying to rely on our own strength. Surrendering to God is relying completely on Him for everything.
Isaiah says this in the first reading, “When we do rely on God, when we become His servants, then we find our strength.” We will have strength to do anything if we know that we are doing God’s will. We will have strength to do anything if we stop focusing all our energy on doing our own will, or doing other people’s will, or doing anyone’s will but the Father’s. He does gives us strength enough to do His will. We get exhausted because we are doing our own will, or trying to meet other people’s expectations of us.
When John the Baptist pointed to Jesus, he was revealing something to us. He was showing us that this is the true servant of God, that Jesus is the one who would do the will of the Father so perfectly that He would lay down His life for each and every one of us. And in that laying down of His life, in the suffering and in the death, He would take upon all the sin of humanity.
The greatest sin is pride. Pride is our own reliance on ourselves instead of God.
And so, as we celebrate this Eucharist, let us truly give ourselves to Him in the Offertory. Give our entire lives to Him and say, “Lord, I desire to be your servant. I give myself completely to you. Take my will. I give myself to you. Help me to always follow your will in my life.”
When we do offer ourselves to Him, when we surrender, we will find all the strength that we need.
