Why All the Sacrifice?

In a convenient and pleasure obsessed culture, sacrifice is not a popular word. Sometimes, people who make sacrifices are looked down on, pitied. The convenient and pleasure junkies see sacrifices as something unnatural, restricting, and even as a psychological problem. When a mother sacrifices her career to take care of her children, they see a woman robbed of her dreams and chained to her children. It is such a sad way of looking at LOVE.

Love without sacrifice is empty. I don’t know if you can call it love at all.

Lent is a time of sacrifice. Why? Because it is the season where we not only remember, but enter into the Sacrifice of God Himself.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:16)

Typically we make sacrifices for two reasons. First, to give up what is not good for us. Second, to sacrifice the good for something better.

A smoker sacrifices his cigarette to save his health. A mother sacrifices her career to raise her children. Or a young man sacrifices all his personal ambitions to answer God’s call to priesthood.

During Lent, we are asked to give up some things or actions. Why? For the health of our soul. The first thing we should give up is sin. Sin makes you miserable, sin kills! Sin is a cancer that you should not hold on to.

We are also asked during Lent to give up some of our attachments, like our favorite food, thing to do, etc… Giving up these little things helps us to practice self-control. In this culture where everybody is “doing their thing” regardless of their consequences, self-control is a gem. Self-control goes a long way if you want a happy life. A person who has no self-control will be controlled by the objects of his affection.

These little “giving ups” also leads us to detachment. And detachment is very important if you really want to love.

“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” Matthew 16:25

The more we are detached to objects, the more we can attach ourselves to God. The more we are detached to objects, the more we can share them to our neighbor.

Real love always put other’s first. It put God first, our neighbor second, and us last. Love always looks outward, not inward. It is not obsessed in pleasing itself, but giving itself to others.

All our sacrifices during lent, big or small, is there to lead us closer to God and our neighbor. They are not empty actions one does for the sake of doing it.

If your sacrifices are not leading you to love God and your neighbor more, then you are just wasting your time and punishing yourself.

Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends. John 15:13

Written by Daxx Bondoc