THE PRIESTS [IN THE JERUSALEM TEMPLE]… offered the day to God [with the morning sacrifice]. The New Testament clearly presents Jesus as…a new high priest (see Heb 2-9), an unblemished lamb (Jn 19:36; 1 Cor 5:7)… both priest and sacrificial victim.

Yet Jesus does not exercise his priesthood alone…. We share in Christ’s priesthood because, through baptism, we share in his life….One way that Catholics exercise this priestly vocation is by praying a “Morning Offering” every day, as soon as they rise from sleep.

The Church has urged its members to make a … priestly offering every day in union with the holy sacrifice of the Mass… [and] encourages the faithful to pray for the pope’s intentions, announced monthly. The text promoted by the Apostleship of Prayer has developed over the last century and a half. It is brief but theologically rich:

O Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer you my prayers, works, joys and sufferings of this day for all the intentions of your Sacred Heart, in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world, in reparation for my sins, for the intentions of all my relatives and friends, and in particular for the intentions of the Holy Father.

…Our lamb has already been sacrificed. Now, in the fullness of time, we, with a simple prayer, begin to restore all things in Christ (see Eph 1:10).

Scott Hahn, Signs of Life (New York: Doubleday, 2009).
Pages 84, 85, 86, 87. Used with permission.