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Hi, Kevin —
I just wanted to add to what my colleague Paul said.
You said:
- We don't need to offer our lives do we?
Yes, we should offer our lives to Him. We offer our lives to the Lord because in renewing our covenant with Him each Sunday and participating in the Eucharist, we are allowing His Life to be lived "in us".
This is an important point that many Protestants misunderstand. They have the common misperception that the good works we do, belong to ourselves, apart from Christ, when Catholic teaching tells us it is solely by grace and our cooperation with His Grace that His good works are manifested in us (by our actions) with the foundation of all these works being grace from one end to the other.
This is also why the Church encourages the faithful to say a morning offering. Here is a web page that have a few examples of prayers you can use:
I also found the comments from Scott Hahn in the "Morning Offering" section of his book "Signs of Life" very solid. He says:
We are called to make an offering of our life, as Jesus did, succeeding where Adam had failed and fulfilling the role the Temple priests had prefigured symbolically. We share in Christ's priesthood because, through baptism, we share in his life, not only his divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), but also his human nature, which is restored in its integrity. In him we can fulfill that primal. priestly vocation that is both sacred and secular. We can sanctify the temporal order and offer it to God, restoring it "in Christ" because we live in Christ. We restore it, a little bit at a time, beginning with the inch or the yard or the acre over which we've been given dominion.
Our work space, our living space-these are where we exercise our kingship and our priesthood. Our altar is our desktop, our workstation, the row that we hoe, the ditch that we dig, the diaper we change, the pot that we stir, the bed that we share with our spouse. "Everything belongs to you;' said St. Paul, " ... and you to Christ, and Christ to God" (1 Corinthians 3:22-23).
One way that Catholics exercise this priestly vocation is by praying a "Morning Offering" every day, as soon as they rise from sleep.
Page 85, Signs of Life by Scott Hahn
Since our altar is our desktop and workstation, it's appropriate to have a crucifix there on our desk, as it is at Mass, when we renew our Sunday covenant with the Lord.
I hope this helps,
Mike
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