An Offering of Well-Being

This Ash Wednesday, I am pondering a curious line from the book of Sirach: “One who heeds the commandments makes an offering of well-being.”

What does it mean to make an offering of well-being? Doesn’t it seem selfish to offer our own well-being to God?

First, God desires our well-being, because people who are physically and spiritually healthy have more energy to participate fully in the life God has given us, which leads to an enhanced ability to love, to serve, and to be grateful. Why would God want us to experience the pain of addiction, illness, and broken relationships when they cripple our ability to live and love fully? God who loves us desires our well-being.

Second, achieving well-being requires sacrifice. To be physically healthy, we need to eat healthy foods in moderation and avoid overindulging in fatty, sugary foods, alcohol, and other drugs that dull our senses and deplete our energy. We must sacrifice our tendency to work so much or engage in so many sedentary activities that we don’t take time to exercise or get enough sleep. To be spiritually healthy, we need to pray every day, listen more than we talk, curb our pride and our tendencies to judge and gossip, and cultivate gratitude. These sacrifices are not self-indulgent, because when we live a balanced life, we can enhance the lives of others. Nor are these sacrifices easy to achieve; they require dedication, patience, and dying to self.

Our bodies and our lives do not belong to us; they are given to us in sacred trust. As Thich Nhat Hanh observed, “Your body belongs to your ancestors, your parents, and future generations, and it also belongs to society and all other living beings. All of them have come together to bring about the presence of this body. Keeping your body healthy is an expression of gratitude to the whole cosmos — the trees, the clouds, everything.”

This Lent, may we make God an offering of our well-being as an expression of gratitude and our desire to live fully the life to which we are called.