To Make Holy

After the Savior’s Atonement, Death and Resurrection, the Law of Moses was fulfilled and we were invited to no longer sacrifice animals but instead to offer up a broken heart and a contrite spirit as our sacrifice. We tend to use the word sacrifice, especially in a non-religious context, with the meaning of giving something up, especially with the hope of getting something better later on. We sacrifice going and hanging out with friends so that we can study today and then we can get a good grade on our test tomorrow. Or we sacrifice staying home and watching tv and instead going to our kids’ concert today so that tomorrow our kid doesn’t resent us. But in the original Latin, the word sacrifice literally means to make holy. We offer something up to the Lord as a sacrifice so that He can then make our offering holy. When the Savior invites us to offer up our broken heart and contrite spirit as a sacrifice, He is inviting us to allow Him to make our broken hearts not just whole, but holy. Indeed, if there is anything that we are giving up, it is the fragile illusion that we somehow have to soldier on with our broken hearts and our ground down spirits with no one to help or ease our pains. We need only suffer the pain and agony of a broken heart and a contrite spirit for as long as it takes us to muster up the courage and the humility to believe Christ and that He is sincere in His offer to make us whole and make us holy. When we sacrifice our broken heart, what we are giving up is our pain and our suffering, our doubts and our fears, all of the bewilderment and confusion and trauma and despair. Life may have broken us, rubbed us raw, stolen all that was good and innocent, made us profane and unholy and seemingly unwanted and unloveable, but we can give all of that up to the Lord, lay it on the altar, plead with Him to consecrate our pain for our gain, to make whole that which was broken, to make holy that which has been rendered common and profane. Christ doesn’t want our broken heart as some proof of our devotion. Christ wants our broken heart because He is the master healer, and He has the power and the disposition and the desire to see us whole and to see us holy.