New book guides readers in making a daily offering of their lives

Catholics are a deeply liturgical people, and the Church’s liturgies and our lives have natural rhythms as their organizing principle: liturgical seasons, the hours throughout the day, sunrise and sunset, and on and on. Each day, in fact, should be offered to God, and we should examine every day how well we followed through on that offering.

Fr. James Kubicki, S.J., is the author of A Year of Daily Offerings: Giving Your Life to God One Day at a Time (Ignatius Press, 2024). Fr. Kubicki has been a priest since 1983, and from 2003 to 2017 served as national director of the Apostleship of Prayer, also known as the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network. He now spends his days leading retreats and parish missions, while serving as a spiritual director at St. Francis de Sales Seminary in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.

In A Year of Daily Offerings, Fr. Kubicki takes the reader through an entire year of guided meditation, as he has done via radio, television, and in person for decades. Each day features a meditation based on the saint of the day, the liturgical feast, or the readings; an offering prayer; a “Daily Word” intended for meditation throughout the day; and a review question.

Fr. Kubicki recently spoke with Catholic World Report about his latest book, and the importance of continually offering our lives to God.

CWR: How did this book come about?

Fr. James Kubicki: I wrote a book about the Sacred Heart of Jesus and after it was published, I was asked if I “had a second book in me.” For several years I’d been recording daily two-minute reflections for Relevant Radio and I thought I could take some of them and adapt them for a daily prayer book that would focus on making an offering of one’s day with the saints and seasons of the liturgical year.

CWR: The subtitle of the book is “Giving Your Life to God One Day at a Time”. Why is it important to give our lives to God every day, rather than just a one time consecration? Don’t we give our entire lives to God when we are baptized?

Fr. Kubicki: Yes, when we’re baptized, we are signed with the Cross and become members of the Body of Christ. That is indeed a consecration or offering of our lives to God.

However, just as Marriage is more than the wedding ceremony but a Sacrament that needs to be lived out one day at a time, so too with Baptism. It’s not a “one and done” deal. In Baptism, we’re anointed with Sacred Chrism to share in Christ’s mission as Priests, Prophets, and Kings or a Royal People. All the baptized exercise the Priesthood of the Faithful by offering worship to God. We do that especially through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass when we join ourselves to the perfect offering of Jesus. But then we have to go out and live the offering that we make at every celebration of the Eucharist.

CWR: Many people might think of a “daily offering” as simply related to the Morning Offering prayer, where in the morning you offer everything that is to come during the day to God, ahead of time. But each day in your book includes one question for an “evening review”, reflecting on the day. Why is it important to end each day this way?

Fr. Kubicki: I think it’s important to not only offer our day at its beginning but to be conscious throughout the day of the opportunities we have to offer all our “prayers, works, joys, and sufferings”.

An evening review helps us look back on the day to see what we offered God. The Morning Offering and Evening Review or Examen help us to be more conscious of God’s presence in our daily lives and to make our entire day an act of worship. With the Evening Review, we reflect on God’s presence in our daily lives and our response to God.

Being aware of how God was pleased and smiling at things in our day reinforces good habits. We may also see that there were some things in the day that we offered to God that were not worthy of Him and that we didn’t intend to be part of the day that we offered God with our morning prayer. We regret those things and we’re sorry. Being aware of those things can help us make better Confessions.

CWR: Much of the Church’s prayer and liturgical life is shaped by time and the seasons; there’s the liturgical calendar, feast days, the Divine Office. Is there a connection here, in the way your book is a full year of Daily Offerings? Why a full year, and only a year?

Fr. Kubicki: “A full year” because it is filled with wonderful examples from the saints who can inspire us to imitate the holy offerings they made of themselves. And the liturgical seasons help us to reflect on the mysteries of our faith and to celebrate God’s love—all of which are motivations for making a more perfect offering of ourselves.

“Only a year” because each year is complete in itself and gives us the opportunity to repeat and reflect upon the saints and seasons. So just as we use pretty much the same Mass readings every year or two or three, my reflections on the saints and seasons of the liturgical year can help us deepen our spiritual lives.

CWR: You’re a priest of the Society of Jesus. Is there anything particularly Ignatian about the structure of the book, or the structure of each day’s offering?

Fr. Kubicki: Yes. St. Ignatius Loyola ended his “Spiritual Exercises” with a meditation in which we reflect on the love of God and respond to His love by making a total offering of ourselves. His famous prayer from the Latin word “Suscipe,” which begins “Take Lord and receive,” is meant to be lived as well as to be prayed.

The structure of my book with 1) a daily reflection, 2) an offering prayer, 3) a phrase to be remembered and repeated throughout the day, and 4) an evening review question, offers a short and simple method of responding to God by returning love for love.

CWR: What are the Scriptural foundations for the idea of this daily offering?

Fr. Kubicki: The key Scripture passage is Romans 12: 1: “I urge you by the mercies of God to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.”

Jesus, with His one perfect sacrifice of Himself on the Cross, replaced all the sacrifices of old. He makes that offering present to us in every celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and He invites us to join Him, as members of His Body, in offering ourselves to the Father with Him.

We find that idea in Colossians 1: 24 where St. Paul writes: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of His Body, which is the Church.”

CWR: What do you hope readers will take away from this book?

Fr. Kubicki: First and foremost, I hope that readers will get in the habit, if they haven’t already, of making a daily offering with a morning prayer and then at the end of the day prayerfully reflecting on the day that they offered.

I think this is part of what the Eucharistic Revival is all about. It’s certainly about what we believe and how we express our belief in our celebrations and our adoration, but it’s also about what difference our belief makes in our daily lives.

The “bookend” approach to our day—a morning offering and an evening review—will help us live a Eucharist life.

Catholic World Report