By Richard Clifford, S.J.
Lent has begun, and with an instinct that may go back to our childhood, many of us look around for something to “give up.” Lent is a time for sacrifice, is it not? Sacrifice, though, is not an attractive word. Perhaps we need to look again at “sacrifice,” for the word crops up often during Lent. Maybe it has a positive meaning, not just “giving up.”
Deuteronomy, the first reading, features Moses, the mediator of the covenant, addressing the Israelites who have just begun to enjoy the promised land. It’s harvest time, a good time for the people to look around at their fertile land and give thanks to God. But how do the people give thanks for their fertile land? Moses tells them:
You shall take some first fruits of the various products of the soil which you harvest from the land the Lord, your God, is giving you; put them in a basket and go to the place which the Lord, your God, will choose as the dwelling place for his name. . . Therefore, I have now brought you the first fruits of the products of the soil, which you, O Lord, have given me.
This is obviously a thanksgiving ceremony. But, surprisingly, “sacrifice” is an apt term as well, which is shown by the derivation of the word “sacrifice.” The English word derives from Latin sacrificium, a combination of two words, the adjective sacrum, “holy” and the verb facere, “to make.” The verb thus means “to make something holy,” in other words, “to transfer something from the human world to God’s world.” The item itself may not be valuable, for example, a basket of first fruits, but it can symbolize something much greater, in this case the land’s produce; it gives back to God a small sample of what the people have been given. In a farming society like Israel in which an estimated ninety percent of the population was involved in farming or in processing farm products (food and clothing), wealth consisted of farm products. Thus agricultural offerings (crops and farm animals) were the usual offerings to God. Israel also engaged in “bloody sacrifice” not because blood itself was thought to be precious, but because blood was the inevitable by-product of slain animals. An animal had to be killed to transfer ownership from human to divine ownership.
The conclusion is that “sacrifice” does not mean giving up but giving to. We don’t give up something; we give something to God. By virtue of their baptism, Christians exercise their priesthood doing what Deuteronomy enjoins – giving a gift acknowledging what God has given to us. Such acknowledging or confessing was done in Deuteronomy and in the Eucharist. As several scholars have suggested, we should think of Eucharist as a verb, not a noun, to give thanks by giving and receiving a gift. It means giving thanks. We join in the great priestly task of joining in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
Richard Clifford, S.J. former President of the Weston Jesuit School of Theology and Founding Dean of the Boston College Clough School of Theology and Ministry