As we begin the new year we gratefully accept the challenge of the new gift of time and perhaps resolve to live more meaningfully in this future given to us. There is nothing we can do more profitably with our lives than worship the Creator, the Father almighty who made all of us and loves each one of us. When the Jerusalem temple was destroyed there was no longer a fitting place to offer animal sacrifice to God, but Jesus came so that we could worship the Father in spirit and truth. Following His example our very lives in their entirety have become the spiritual sacrifice which we can consciously offer to our Heavenly Father. This does not mean doing reat and heroic thiings but doing everything with the purpose of pleasing Him. The little things become mighty acts of worship because they are motivated by love and united to the grace that Jesus won for us with His own sacrifice on the cross.
Mother Franziska strove to offer ALL to God. This meant that her travels, worries, joys and sorrows were acts of love. She taught her sisters that there was no such thing as a mundane action of little consequence. United with Christ in love everything had infinite value for the redemption of the world.
We do not stand before God alone. Even though He is a personal God who appreciates our personal and intimate response to His love, He makes us "our brothers and sisters 'keeper'. Our example, words, actions, and attitudes send energy waves that influence the world for good or for ill. Mother Franziska gave her sisters a spirituality that strives to make God's love visible today -- visible to those near us and by their influence, visible far beyond our limited presence. In an audience, our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI expressed this so beautifully by saying that a communit of persons, offering spiritual worship to the Father become like a mirror reflecting the infinite love of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
