Lent Meditation: Day 33- March 22, 2026

📖 Scripture Verse

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.  

— Romans 12:1 (King James Version).

🕯️Meditation

The twelfth chapter of Romans is where all of Paul’s intense theological reasoning about human nature, God’s righteousness, God’s promises to Israel, and God’s expansive love for the nations of the world, which have been the subjects of the letter, now turns to a vision for the Christian life.  What are we to do once we understand who we are and who God is and what God’s spirit is doing in the world?

This verse, and the chapter that follows it, call us to self-offering.  In response to God’s mercy and love, the sensible thing to do is to respond by bringing our whole lives into the service of God.  That looks like a life of love, humility, service, patience, peacemaking, and compassion.  I encourage you to read the whole chapter carefully and repeatedly—its one of the most powerful ethical teachings in scripture.

Another word for the self-offering of our lives in service to God is “oblation.”  Our Catechism lists oblation as one of the principal types of prayer.  “Oblation is an offering of ourselves, our lives and labors, in union with Christ, for the purposes of God.”

We can turn our entire life into prayer.  From the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, a collection of stories about the mystical desert monastics of the early church:

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him: ‘Abba, as much as I’m able, I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace, and as much as I’m able, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?’ Then the elder stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him: ‘If you want, you can become all flame.’

🙏 Prayer

And here we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto thee; humbly beseeching thee that we…may be fulfilled with thy grace and heavenly benediction; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.  (Adapted from the BCP 1662 post-communion prayer).

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