The Bolivians have a very peculiar practice. Every time there are gatherings that involve drinking alcohol, one has to make an “offering.” A person pours the first amount of alcohol on the ground as an “offering to Pachamama” or Madre Tierra, or Mother Land.
Again, when the leader of the community or the host of the part shouts “Salud” or “cheers”, everybody needs to pour some drinks on the soil again before drinking.
For someone who does not drink like me, this is a great way to escape from being drunk. (Imagine, pouring alcohol in front of your companions is allowed and..... sacred. Hehe)
Someone who comes from outside of this culture could misconstrue that these people are wasting the beer. However, for them, it is an act of belief -particularly of offering- to a deity they believed since the time of their nascent past.
And besides, beers here are cheap. Bolivians are beer-loving people. In fact each province have its own brand of beer.
(In my opinion, Paceña is the best. Hehe)
This Sunday, the Gospel is all about Jesus, the Lamb of God. The image of the Lamb is always associated with Jewish offerings.
This Gospel invites us to reflect upon our conception of offering.
Why do we need to offer to God?
Does He not have anything?
God does not need anything. Everything we have belongs to him. We cannot offer anything to Him which did not come from him. So if we think that by offering we contribute anything to God’s being, we are wrong.
On this topic, we implore a quote from the Great Pope Benedict XVI from his Book The Spirit of Liturgy “the goal of worship and the goal of creation as a whole are one and the same—divinization, a world of freedom and love.”
This means that we perform the act of offering because we want them to be divinized, -to become holy.
To this note, I remember very well one of my favorite lines in one of the prefaces of the Mass which says: “Our prayer of adoration adds nothing to your greatness but makes us grow in your love.”
Another misconception about offering we might have is to think of it as a way of loosing the things we need or we love on the hands of God. In other words, offering means destruction, separation, and sadness.
However, Benedict XVI asks: “What pleasure is God supposed to take in destruction? Is anything really surrendered to God through destruction? ”
Perhaps, one thinks in this direction as well. In this direction, when we give ourselves to God completely, we loose freedoms. Our lives are consumed and ravaged completely. We look at God like the ocean that takes away the slippers of a child, or like a balloon that once a child lets go into the air it vanishes forever.
Perhaps, the movie Apocalypto comes to your mind when we sepak of offering. It is the story of how Mayan culture viewed its relationship between the people and the deity Mayan sun god Kukulkan. In the movie, we will see bloody execution of outsiders as human sacrifices to obtain good weather.
If we think of sacrificial offering in this way, we are not in anyway different from the heathens. Definitely, it is time to rethink our relationship with with the Divine One.
The second reading speaks about being sanctified and being called to be holy. The first reading gives us a hint about the graced election of Israel to be God’s instrument. God shows his goodness to Israel so that it will become “a light to the nations," so that the salvation of God “may reach to the ends of the earth.”
The Gospel today affirms that Christ is the sacrificial lamb. He is the sacrifice that came from God. God himself has provided sacrifice for himself -for the sake of mankind- one who is God and Man himself. We can never afford such a sacrifice. Nobody could ever replace, imitate, or add to his sacrifice.
And what can we do? Nothing really.
We just have to enjoy life love God and love one another.
When we offer to God people, things, situations, problems, let us allow him to do as He pleases.
He will not destroy them.
He his sanctify them.
He will use them to sanctify us in return.
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