"sacrifice" has more than one meaning

I read the "Doubts about the Israel Challenge" post and I think there is something that needs to be explained so that everyone can understand the spirit of the Israel Challenge. Many people have not realized that the word "sacrifice" has more than one meaning. The meaning of this word that is most often used by the world is "suffering”. When we say "sacrifice", people immediately think of extreme suffering, almost as if it were a penance. However, at the Universal Church, the word "sacrifice" is used in a sense that is most often forgotten: surrender.

The definition found in the Cambridge Dictionary Online is: “to give up something for something else considered more important.” This is our sacrifice. It is not something we give to suffer, torturing ourselves, hoping that the suffering will make a difference. We voluntarily sacrifice something that God asked us for, knowing that this sacrifice will bring us the results He promised. It is necessary to think to surrender something. It is an action that is taken in spirit. On the other hand, suffering is of the soul, of the heart and, sometimes, of the body.

I understand the confusion. Catholic culture glorifies suffering. So much so that Catholicism focuses strongly on the physical pain of Jesus on the cross, as if that, in itself, was a sacrifice. When, His greatest pain was voluntarily surrendering His connection with the Father, His peace of mind and purity (because He bore our sins) and His right to live, so that we might have life. His sacrifice was spiritual, He surrendered. The physical sacrifice, death, only symbolized His spiritual sacrifice, which delivered us from eternal death.

The Catholic culture considers those who suffer to be holy. When, in fact, those who surrender are the true saints. Those who surrender their will, those who surrender their right to act in revenge, to talk back, those who surrender confusions, those who surrender living according to their animal instincts and impulses, those who surrender belonging to themselves, those who surrender being undisciplined, those who surrender their own life, those who surrender something they’re attached to, those who surrender the right of finding their protection in money… Those who surrender, renounce.

These are the sacrifices that are made in the world, without even knowing. Students surrender their right to sleep in order to go to school, those who surrender going out to clubs to have a steady girlfriend or boyfriend, those who surrender eating sweets to maintain their health, those who surrender having a inactive lifestyle to exercise, those who surrender their right to spend money on themselves so that they can invest it on something else, those who surrender being lazy to read a book...

And when the pastor says that the sacrifice has to hurt, it's true, but this pain is not Catholic, it is not physical. Because surrendering hurts more than physical pain or just a mere pain. It is the pain of the soul being disciplined by the spirit. This pain makes us stronger, because it makes us more dependent of God. And I think that this is the criteria He uses when asking us to sacrifice. So (when we begin seeing sacrifice as surrender, and not as suffering) we begin to understand when the pastor says that God asks us for more, so that He can give us more. He asks for what is holding us back (and sometimes we don’t even notice) and, by sacrificing, we are set free to conquer greater things, because we are forced out of the comfort zone that caused us to be accommodated. We break through our limits, we do what we would never have done on our own, sometimes without even understanding why God asked us for that, but we trust that He knows what He is doing and, with this trust, we make our sacrifice. We believe, therefore, we surrender.

This is the spirit of the Israel Challenge