Our Lady of Lourdes, Saint Bernadette, Focused Prayer and Penance = A Fruitful Lent
Offer it Up = Open it Up
Photo By: Pixabay/falco
Have you ever heard someone say "Offer it up"? Sometimes people have a hard time understanding what that phrase means. When you think of the phrase “offer it up”, think of it as “open it up.”
When we “offer up” our suffering, we “open it up" for God to enter into it. This makes our struggle (suffering) fruitful in many different ways, two of them are:
First, when we "offer up" a difficulty to God - instead of succumbing to it in a negative way or trying to push the pain down and not deal with it - it is as if a wall has come down in our heart and we are giving Him access to an area of our life that He was not able to come fully into before. We have "opened it up" to Him. Because He is present there now, we are not on our own and can intentionally draw from His strength and power to face the difficulty. His strength begins exactly where our natural ability ends.
Second, now that He is present, so is His self-sacrificing love, which we can tap into in order to offer up the difficulty as a prayer of intercession for others. In other words, He is present in our difficulty - we are now yoked with him (Matthew 11:28-30) - so that we can, not only bear it patiently, but, we can go even further, and offer it up as an act of love for other people.
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About the Author
I am a daughter of the Most High and of His Catholic Church. I introduce myself that way because I am so grateful for that! I have been married to Dan for 34 years and we have three young adult children - Brett, Nicole & Eryn - and three grandchildren - Cash, Bowie and Indy. I was employed as the Adult Faith Formation Coordinator at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Peachtree City, Georgia for 14 years from December of 2008 to January of 2023. I earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Theology from Catholic Distance University and a certificate as a Catholic Spiritual Mentor from the Catholic Spiritual Mentorship Program.
I left fulltime ministry in the parish to concentrate on organizing events. I would like to extend my outreach to other parishes and organizations who would like to host a wonderful Adult Faith formation event but might not have the experience or confidence to do that on their own. I offer various services including but not limited to (fees are charged hourly for most services):
+ Event Planning: event planning from start to finish,
+ Consultation: consultation about an event,
+ Consultation about running a successful Adult Faith Formation Program.
+ I also offer different Adult Faith classes and courses that can be accessed by an individual or a group or can be taught by me via zoom or locally in person.
Website https://www.catholiceventplanning.com/ or www.redemptivesuffering.net
