PHOTO MEDITATION
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A sacrifice of praise
By Joseph R. Veneroso, M.M.
We sacrifice little who offer God
Of our excess prosperity or time
As if a minimum of effort would ever suffice
To cleanse our sins or delay God’s justice
Or perhaps bribe our way into heaven’s favor
Or, worse, bend divine will to our own.
No, authentic sacrifice demands nothing less
Than a painful, almost unthinkable loss,
An offering of our deepest longing,
Our dearest possession: our truest self.
Sacrifice requires something precious die
Not for destruction but for consecration
Made holy by our willingness to let go
Not of created, much less imagined things,
When even well-intentioned promises fail
And hopes lie smoldering in still glowing embers.
Then, O then, when our votive offering joins
With that of Calvary where the true Lamb
Once for all bled and died in place of every Isaac everywhere
And we, from participation in this eternal oblation
From newly purified lips proclaim
A true sacrifice of praise.