Offering up and not feeling it

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Greenfields

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When offering up say an exceptionally hard day,is it equally valid when your hearts not in it and you don’t feel any relief and you still feel disgruntled and unhappy…as to say a hard day offered up and you feel when doing that the load is lighter and you’re at peace? …and more pleasant to those around you perhaps.
 
May God bless you when things seem easy, yet may He bless you even more when to love, to endure, to serve, and to hope, seems very difficult
 
Yeah. It’s probably even better actually. It’s harder to offer stuff up if you don’t feel like it.
 
I think it depends.

A saint will offer up a hard day and feel happy no matter what because he accepts God’s will.

For those of us who are not there yet, obedience adds a great deal to our acts, so doing as God asks carries a lot of merit. If we do as God asks because we want to do that thing anyway, then it is not as meritorious as doing that which we do not want to do solely out of obedience.

The difference between us and saints is that they always want to do God’s will because it is His will and they love Him.
 
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It would be odd if one was happy all the time, but inwardly our joy is a separate thing from mere emotion.
So, you can feel joyful at the same time as feeling pained.

But obedience is good.
 
I guess by an exceptionally hard day it might mean my mind is not in a good place,moody with hormones ,unwell ,bad weather.It doesn’t happen that often that I can’t give it over to God easily but the other day was out of the blue and a real struggle.By evening the feeling was gone,thank God .I just wondered if it was of as much value as a day given with more peaceful feelings in handing it over.
 
Offering suffering up is not a guarantee of relief from that suffering; it is not spiritual Tylenol. Rather, the lingering malaise that you feel afterward constitutes part of the value of that which you offer up. The great Saints desired, even enjoyed suffering for their love of God. One can learn to take pleasure in having suffering to offer up for others. It is a tremendous spiritual work of charity.

This method of dealing with suffering runs exactly counter to human nature and conventional wisdom. Nevertheless, it remains true. Once you become aware of the value which your suffering has to others, your own attitude can only improve. A spiritual win-win.
 
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Greenfields said:
When offering up say an exceptionally hard day,is it equally valid when your hearts not in it and you don’t feel any relief and you still feel disgruntled and unhappy…as to say a hard day offered up and you feel when doing that the load is lighter and you’re at peace? …and more pleasant to those around you perhaps.
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Perfectly valid and maybe even worth more. The offering is meant as a sacrifice. When you feel no relief but still make the sacrifice then you are being faithful.
 
It is a combining of your sufferings with those of Jesus on the Cross.
 
Nelka said:
I still don’t understand offering things up.
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Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

You can do quite ordinary and routine things to the glory of God. Just tell Him so.
 
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This is it, said very nicely and succinctly, too. 🙂

I tend to “offer things up” when I am especially feeling heavily burdened and besieged by multiple health issues at one time.

As an example, I was so frustrated with trying to walk yesterday, when my left knee started to tighten up at the same time that my right hip was bothering me.

I slowed to a turtle crawl basically, and had to hang on to my husband’s arm because I didn’t have my walker with me.

I started to laugh at the absurdity of my situation while feeling the frustration, and I was praying and “offering it up” at the same time, not just for my own misery and discomfort, but thinking of the Lord, too. 🙂
 
Well, if I have the time, I try to think of an example during Jesus’s life that parallel’s my situation. Example: some kind of mental anguish - Agony in the Garden (obviously on a much, MUCH smaller scale).
So then I pray something like, “Jesus, as a member of Your Mystical Body, I unite my mental anguish / suffering to your Agony in the Garden for _______ (assuming it’s in align with His will).”
If I don’t have the time, I try to ask my Guardian Angel to offer it up. I would encourage you to look up the Heroic Act of Charity, if you don’t know who to offer it up for.
 
Sometimes I will say a quick ‘dear Jesus please look after (name)’ say if I do the dishes .He knows it’s coming from the heart.Or ,“Dear Jesus I do this for you” for the lager things.Prayerss to go with it through out the day
and thinking of Jesus on the cross.
 
I say: All for Thee, Dear Jesus, Who has suffered so much for me.

That generally helps put things into perspective for me.

My problem is that I do not always remember to offer up my suffering…
 
An excerpt from the spiritual masterpiece Divine Intimacy, by Fr. Gabriel of Saint Mary Magdalen (parentheses and italics mine) :
We must not base our interior life, our search for God, on sentiment or spiritual consolations, but on an intensive practice of the theological virtues (i.e. faith, hope, charity). Saint John of the Cross gives this advice to a soul seeking God: “Hear a word of substance and unapproachable truth: it is that thou seek Him in faith and love , without desiring to find satisfaction in aught (anything at all).” Therefore, we must learn to seek God without any desire for pleasure, consolation, satisfaction, even though it be purely spiritual. We must learn to walk in the path of “naked faith.” Faith, more than any kind of knowledge or of reasoning, puts the soul into direct contact with God. Faith is “the proximate and proportionate means whereby the soul is united with God; for such is the likeness between itself and God, that there is no other difference save that which exists between seeing God and believing in Him.” Faith places us before God as He is; it does not make us see Him, but it makes us believe in Him, and thus puts our intellect in contact with Him. By means of faith, “God manifests Himself to the soul in divine light which passes all understanding. And therefore, the greater the the faith of the soul, the more closely it is united with God.” Faith unites the soul even though it experiences no spiritual consolation; on the contrary, God often deprives the soul of all spiritual consolation that it may exercise itself more in faith and grow in it."
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