The Sacred Triduum: Service, Sacrifice, Salvation (Part III)

As surely as true Service requires a certain amount of dedicated action, Sacrifice requires even more.

For those on a spiritual path, the sacrifices start out small and sensible.

Your old world views are offered up, making way for clearer sight. Your old self is cast to the four winds, making space for the new you. Your material possessions may even be dispersed to clear the chains of physical clutter from your spiritual development.

With true dedication to a path, the final grand sacrifice may be your Self–giving over everything to the power which you serve or for the cause you trumpet.

Without a doubt, Service and Sacrifice are inexorably intertwined.

During the last day of his life, Jesus gave up everything he had.

Like many other spiritual figures, he ended his life virtually alone, betrayed and killed by his own people.

In his final moments, he proved to be quite human. He questioned his patron, “Why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34)

Even as we serve and sacrifice, we do not fully grasp what those words mean until we are pushed to our limits and pass them.

Up to that point, we have doubts and missteps. We find our burdens must sometimes be carried by others. We find that sometimes we can not do as we wish, be it because of prior obligations or because of the actions of others.

Again and again we arrive at our limits, unable to press ourselves further. Unable to complete our tasks we have chosen for our service. Unable to give what we don’t know we have.

Even in his moments of utter humanity, his moments of doubt and his brief flashes of anger, Jesus remained true to the path he believed he was on. He fulfilled the prophecies.

He, of course, had those prophecies to use as a map to guide his actions. Most are not so lucky (or, perhaps, not so unlucky) and must discover the edges of their path on their own.

And still, they will become frustrated when those edges block them from achieving their goal, when those limits prevent them from serving their cause.

That is when the greatest sacrifice comes in.

The ultimate sacrifice is not of our lives–we forfeit them eventually regardless of our path–but of our limitations.

True Sacrifice leaves us transcendent in our Service.