Inevitably, mission within the Church will require making an offering of ourselves to God. The Virgin Mary presents the child Jesus in the Temple in order to fulfill the requirement of the Torah that each first-born son must be given to God. This is a reminder that God spared the first-born of the Israelites, ransoming them from Pharaoh. In Christ, then, the Church makes each of us an offering to God. This is perhaps best experienced when the precepts of the Church prove difficult, when fasting or tithing or adhering to moral teachings gives us reasons to ‘go where we do not choose to go’. This act of faith, the interior oblation of the will, is the ‘obedience and not sacrifice’ that is acceptable to God.