Hi,
It is part of the interior Catholic culture, which we call Catholic spirituality, that we “offer up” things. Other Christians don’t know what we are talking about when we say that we are going to “offer it up.” We can offer up enjoyable experiences, the effort we give to our work, our successes and our failures. When we offer something up, we are making a prayer of it. The best prayers we offer are the sacrifices we make. Love is best expressed through sacrifice as Our Lord taught us when He said that we can have no greater love than to lay down one’s life for a friend (Jn. 15:13). We know how much we care about others by how willing we are to put ourselves out for them. So we can know something of how much we love God by how willing we are to put ourselves out for Him. We sacrifice; we offer up something that we like as an expression of our love.
Fr. Vincent Serpa, O.P.
