Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Sacrifices, especially the Old Testament sacrifices, are merely a symbol of giving ourselves to God, whereas obedience is not a symbol but the reality of giving, offering, sacrificing ourselves to God, because obedience is the most personal thing we have, our freedom, our will.
Saul, in today's first reading, believed that he had to offer God something impressive, let's say, even if it was something different than what God asked for: the best sheep, the best oxen, and so on. God didn't ask for that, but Saul offered it, thinking his offering would be better than what God asked for, and he misunderstood God, because what was God asking for? Not something outside of Saul, but for Saul himself, his surrender, his trust, his obedience.
So God asks of us, first and foremost, not what we possess, the things we have, or even the things we can do, but what we are, who we are, and that's the most important thing in a spiritual life. So God asks an offering of our very selves, not, again, of our stuff, of our things, of what we do, but of what we are, and what does that look like concretely?
I like to bring it back to prayer, and prayer is that place where we offer ourselves to God as we are, so that God, again, can transform us, take us from where we are. I think it begins with honesty in prayer, and not just polite words, because, again, if we try to have a life of prayer, usually we begin borrowing somebody else's words, we repeat prayers that others have composed, and that's good, and that's always going to be a part of our prayer life, but it cannot stop there.
The temptation is, perhaps, again, I call it a temptation. The mindset is that I have to find the best prayers in the best prayer booklets, written by the best saints ever, and that will make my prayer life good, and again, there's truth to that. These prayers exist for a purpose, but what God really wants, if you want to make progress in prayer and have that intimate relationship with God, is our own words, our own thoughts, our own feelings, our own selves. Bring that to prayer.
Ooh, but that's not so pretty to look at. Well, that's what God is asking, but I've got a better sacrifice for God. I've got a better prayer. I've got a book to read. I've got a prayer to say, but God is asking for you. Well, no, no, no. I've got something better. Look at these sheep. Look at these oxen, and so on, and so forth.
Once again, offering to God that mess of our life that is the obedience that He asks of us, because then He can transform us. There's a psalm that says God stoops down to us and lifts us up out of the dung heap to sit us on the throne of princes.
With Saul, it seems that he wanted to convince God that he didn't begin on a dung heap, but he was a prince. He set up a monument to himself, like this fake prayer version of himself. I like to use that expression, right? This glorious Saul, King Saul—well, again, that's the temptation. We have to present ourselves somehow to God as more than we are. No, we have to show ourselves to God in the messy way that we really exist, again, with the dung still clinging to us, and God lifts us up out of it, cleans us up, transforms us, and then sits us on the thrones of princes, for sure.
So, again, it's that honesty in prayer. I love to talk about that, because it's so important in the spiritual life.
What happens to Saul later on? He winds up being rejected. Why? Because he won't give himself to God. That's the thing that God is asking. Saul, surrender as you are to God, trust, but he won't do that. He's trying to offer constantly something else. That's why he winds up being rejected. Why? Because he doesn't want to offer himself.
One last thought, because we're celebrating a votive Mass of Our Lady today. You're familiar with that analogy of St. Louis de Montfort, probably: Our Lady who takes our really crummy offerings and makes them presentable to God. And I think the proper way to look at this analogy used by St. Louis de Montfort is not that God is really not desirous of a really, you know, crummy sacrifices and offerings. No, He wants exactly those, and Our Lady's role is to get us to offer them.
Again, He uses the example of an apple that in and of itself is not fit as a gift for a king, but Our Lady makes it fit because she puts it on a gold tray, garnishes it, and presents it as her own, and that's all true, and it's beautiful. But I think, again, the more beautiful thing about that is, again, God wants that apple, and Our Lady's role is to get us to offer it, to overcome, I guess, that reluctance, that repugnance or whatever it is that might be holding us back—that apple, that crab apple that's not really impressive, sometimes rotten with worms in it, bruised, dirty, whatever—to get us to offer it, to surrender to Our Lady, and with her help, to offer ourselves totally in surrender to God.
That's what Saul was being asked to offer, and it was much easier to offer than all the sheep and the oxen that he offered, so let us learn a lesson from him. Offer ourselves—not something outside of us, but something within us: our souls, our hearts, our minds, our very selves—to God.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.