Commentary on Romans 12:1-8

(linked to the 7^th Section of the Post-Lourdes Study Topic)

The readings for the last three months form a sort of trilogy with the linking theme of sacrifice. Two months ago, during Lent, we thought about Jesus’ Self-sacrifice. Then last month, around Easter, we thought about how we should sacrifice the values of the world in favour of the values of the risen, glorified life of heaven. This month, which ends this year with the Feast of Pentecost and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, we have a reading that openly calls on us to “offer our lives as a living sacrifice”.

Paul deliberately uses the sort of language associated with the sacrifices that were offered in the Temple in Jerusalem, but he makes it clear that we should offer our lives as a living sacrifice, not by physically killing ourselves in the way that the animals were killed in the Temple, but by being transformed by the “renewing of our minds”. This renewing means being changed more and more into the likeness of Christ, and it must be a work of the Holy Spirit.

Although this reading is primarily about how we relate to God and to one another in the Church, it is not difficult to see it as an ideal description of the sacrament of marriage. Indeed, again and again, Scripture compares our relationship with God in the Church to a marriage.

Marriage is an all-or-nothing commitment. Neither spouse can hold anything back, but offers his or her body – everything that defines him or her – as a living sacrifice to the other. But we cannot give ourselves away until we have taken possession of ourselves. The priest in the Temple could not offer a sacrifice until the animal was under control (imagine a bull rampaging around the Temple while the priest chased after it waving a knife around), and in the same way, before we can offer ourselves Paul says that we must think of ourselves dispassionately, recognising what it is that God has given to us.

If we allow the Holy Spirit to “renew our minds” then we shall be able to know the will of God and behave in a way that is good, acceptable and mature. Only then shall we be able to give ourselves to another, and it is only when we have given ourselves completely for the sake of another that we truly become what we were meant to be.