Am 5, 21-25 I hate, I spurn your feasts

Amos

(Am 5, 21-25) I hate, I spurn your feasts

[21] I hate, I spurn your feasts, I take no pleasure in your solemnities; [22] Your cereal offerings I will not accept, nor consider your stall-fed peace offerings. [23] Away with your noisy songs! I will not listen to the melodies of your harps. But if you would offer me holocausts, [24] then let justice surge like water, and goodness like an unfailing stream. [25] Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings for forty years in the desert, O house of Israel?

(CCC 2100) Outward sacrifice, to be genuine, must be the expression of spiritual sacrifice: "The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit...." (PS 51:17). The prophets of the Old Covenant often denounced sacrifices that were not from the heart or not coupled with love of neighbor (Cf. Am 5:21-25; Isa 1:10-20). Jesus recalls the words of the prophet Hosea: "I desire mercy, and not sacrifice" (Mt 9:13; 12:7; Cf. Hos 6:6). The only perfect sacrifice is the one that Christ offered on the cross as a total offering to the Father's love and for our salvation (Cf. Heb 9:13-14). By uniting ourselves with his sacrifice we can make our lives a sacrifice to God. (CCC 1435) Conversion is accomplished in daily life by gestures of reconciliation, concern for the poor, the exercise and defense of justice and right (Cf. Am 5:24; Isa 1:17), by the admission of faults to one's brethren, fraternal correction, revision of life, examination of conscience, spiritual direction, acceptance of suffering, endurance of persecution for the sake of righteousness. Taking up one's cross each day and following Jesus is the surest way of penance (Cf. Lk 9:23).