Offering ourselves to God

Offering Our Whole Livelihood

How can I prove my friendship to God? By keeping his commandments. How can I prove my love to him? By giving myself to him from the bottom of my heart, in such a way that no other loveever dwells in it. In this sense, God is jealous. He is not jealous of our friendships, on the contrary, he encourages them. But he is jealous of that particular gift of the heart which is love, and which is total and exclusive in its nature….

[O Lord,] I have nothing to give you. But my heart I have given you. I know that by the price it has cost me. I do not yield my heart to creatures, you keep it, you hold it sweetly enchained. I give it to you and continually regive it you. This poor and wretched heart. But which is my heart, the most personal possession I have to dispose of. I give it you. It is the share that you demanded of me at baptism, still more at my First Communion….

I only experience any comfort and joy when, talking to someone, I feel a certain good being done, something being done for God and for souls.

Raïssa Maritain

Raïssa Maritain († 1960) was born in Russia. She was a convert to Catholicism and the wife of philosopher Jacques 

A reading from 
the holy Gospel according to Luke 21:1-4

When Jesus looked up he saw some wealthy people putting their offerings into the treasury and he noticed a poor widow putting in two small coins. He said, “I tell you truly, this poor widow put in more than all the rest; for those others have all made offerings from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has offered her whole livelihood.”

The Gospel of the Lord.