A Prayer of Offering for Lent
The world is content with setting right the surface of things; the church aims at regenerating the very depths of the heart.
(John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University, 1852, p.203)
My God, I know well, you could have saved us at your word, without yourself suffering; but you did choose to purchase us at the price of your Blood.
I look on you, the Victim lifted up on Calvary, and I know that your death was an expiation for the sins of the whole world.
My Lord, I offer you myself in turn as a sacrifice of thanksgiving.
You have died for me, and I in turn make myself over to you.
My wish is to be separated from everything of this world; to cleanse myself simply from sin.
Enable me to carry out what I profess.
(A Newman Prayer Book, Editor V.F.Blehl, S.J., 1990, p.23)