“The Divine Heart of Jesus Offers Itself Up, In the First Place Place, as a
Morning Offering to the Heavenly Father for the Sins of the Whole World."
By Rev. J. Fuhlrott
"They carried him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord" - Luke iv. 22"
God commanded the Israelites to bring Him every first-born as a sacrifice in remembrance of the truth, that the angel had killed in one night all the first-born of the Egyptians, but had spared those of Israelites. "Sanctify unto me every first-born" (Exod xiii 2). To obey this law the Mother of God after having spent forty days in the stable at Bethlehem, journeyed to Jerusalem with the Divine Child and His foster father, there to offer up to the eternal Father in the Temple her first and only begotten Son. Holding Him in her arms, and kneeling down with reverence and devotion, she there offered Him up to Almighty God, according to the testimony of St. Thomas of Villanova, with the following words: "Almighty Father! Take this sacrifice which I, Thy servant, offer up to Thee for the whole world, accept our mutual Son, for He is Thine from all eternity, mine from time, take now from the hands of Thy servant this most holy morning offering, which will thereafter from the arms of the Cross be offered up to Thee as an evening sacrifice." Oh, what an agreeable sacrifice! Inasmuch as the tender Infant Jesus consecrated, at His first public presentation in the Temple, His Most Sacred Heart to the Heavenly Father to glorify Him, and to reconcile Him with the human race. Truly a most agreeable sacrifice, than which this earth has never seen another alike!
"Never," says Luke of Burgos, "has such a sacrifice appeared in the tent of the covenant. Never had there been seen in the Temple of Solomon such a glorious and illustrious offering." Already the prophecy of Aggeus began to be fulfilled: "Great shall be the glory of this last house, more than of the first, for the desired of all nations shall come: and I will fill the house with glory." (Aggeus ii 8, 10) God the Lord and highest lawgiver had commanded our fathers that they should daily, as a perpetual sacrifice, offer up an innocent lamb in the morning at the rising of the sun, and a second one in the evening at the setting of the sun, for the mutual good of the people. This is that morning and evening sacrifice of which David so often speaks, and which was offered up by the people at public expense. First of all, the lamb was washed in the pond, then it was slain by the priest, cleansed of the blood and entrails, and then roasted upon a wooden spit in the shape of a cross over a slow fire, while the priest and the people stood around with hearts and hands uplifted imploringly to heaven, offering up the God the Lord of the heaven and earth. This is what thou shall sacrifice upon the altar. Two lambs of a year old every day continually, one lamb in the morning, and the other in the evening." (Exod. xxix. 38.) O sweetest Jesus! Thou art that morning and evening sacrifice, the morning sacrifice, as Thou was brought, as St. Bernard says, "by They holy Mother on the day of her Purification and there offered up for the first time in the Temple to the eternal Father for the salvation of the whole world, where she paid for thee to the priest, as to the representative of God, five shekels as ordained by the law." St. Thomas of Villanova says: "The Redeemer was bought by the Virgin for five shekels, He who should redeem the world by His five wounds." But Thou didst become an evening sacrifice, O Jesus. When on the evening of Thy life, Thou wast nailed to the wooden spit of the holy Cross and inflamed in the fire of divine love which burned unceasingly in Thy Most Sacred Heart, Thou was offered up there for the sins of all people as an agreeable burnt offering.
St. John the Baptist points out to the Jews the Redeemer, who had just returned out of the wilderness, saying: "Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world." O Christian soul, how much art thou obliged to this innocent Lamb! He could with perfect justice have cast thee into hell long ago, and behold! He vouchsafes to become a sacrifice for thee, and to offer up in the Temple His divine Heart itself to His Heavenly Father as a worthy satisfaction for thy sins. O love, O boundless kindness! Can we, O God, make any return which is worthy of Thy love? Oh, if we had a hundred, if we had a thousand hearts, should we not be obliged to love Thee with all these heats and with all their strength?
It is related of King David in the second book of Kings (xxiv25) that when a pestilence devastated the city of Jerusalem, he, to appease the wrath of God, erected an altar, upon which he offered up burnt-offerings and peace-offerings for the salvation of the entire kingdom: "And David built there an altar to the Lord and offered holocausts and peace-offerings: and the Lord became merciful to the land; and the plague was stayed from Israel." Then the angel which had been seen in the clouds with a drawn sword immediately with-drew the sword and replaced it in the scabbard, as a sign that God was propitiated. "And when the angel of the Lord had stretched out his hand over Jerusalem to destroy it, the Lord had pity on the affliction, and said to the angel that slew the people: It is enough: now hold thy hand." (II. Kings xxiv. 16.) What signification did this sacrifice have which was so pleasing to God that it brought peace and salvation to the people? O most amiable Jesus! Thou wast prefigured by this and similar peace-offerings as the morning and evening sacrifice. "Through this," says Cornelius of Lapide, "Christ was to be prefigured, stretched upon the cross and slain like a beast of sacrifice for the redemption of mankind."
If even this offering as offered up by David at the time of the pestilence could appease God, because it prefigured Christ, what would the true, living, innocent, and divine Heart of Jesus, that meek Lamb, be able to do if thou should offer it up to the eternal Father for thy soul, especially in the the sacrifice of the Mass or when receiving the Holy Eucharist with a clean conscience? O how holy, how pure, how exalted would this offering be in the face of the whole court of heaven! Is it possible that thy prayers and desires would be rejected and not be heard if this innocent victim should be offered up to the Heavenly Father?
Father Lohner, S. J., relates of Albuquerque, the celebrated admiral, that on one of his journeys to the East Indies his fleet was in the greatest peril of sinking on account of a terrific storm which was raging. When the danger was at its height, he seized his child, and, holding it up toward heaven, he besought God, the Lord of the world, to spare him and his companions from death for the sake of that innocent child. His prayer was heard, they were saved, the storm ceased.
O most gracious virgin! Mother of God and of men, Mother of the Redeemer, behold the misery in which the people of all countries languish, and how by the waves of this misery they are tossed here and there, and how Holy Church is persecuted, publicly and secretly, by word and deed, how she is blasphemed, calumniated, robbed, oppressed, because they desire to annihilate her and make her disappear from the face of the earth. O gracious Mother! give aid to the Holy Church, have pity upon the Holy Father, the persecuted Christians; show they sweetest Son Jesus to the eternal Father, that He may vouchsafe to grant peace and unity to the Church and the people for the sake of the innocence of this meekest Lamb, and especially for the sake of His amiable and most innocent Heart.
It is related of a high official of the court of Queen Candacis of Aethiopia that, when reading in Isaias the words: "He shall be led as a sheep to the slaughter, and shall be dumb as a lamb before his shearer, and he shall not open his mouth" (Is. liii. 7), this heathen, by this simple passage, was so moved in his heart with love for the most holy and meekest Heart of Jesus, this divine Lamb, that he had this verse explained to him by St. Philip. He then confessed his belief in Jesus Christ and asked for baptism.
O Christian soul!
If the consideration alone of the innocent Heart of Jesus, that immaculate and
spotless Lamb, could work such a wonderful conversion in a heathen, what may and
will the Real Presence of this divine Heart in the Holy Eucharist accomplish for
us? Let us therefore exclaim with St. John: "Worthy is the Lamb that was
slain to receive power, and divinity, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and
glory, and benediction," (Apoc. v. 12.) Amen.