A Servant of All

September 19, 2021

It is exciting to be invited to be a part of the mission of the Kingdom of God.  By our Baptism, we are all invited to be partakers of the sharing of God’s message.  As Jesus sits with the twelve, today’s Gospel gives us an insight as to how we are to share in this Good News.  He tells them and tells us we are to be servants of all.  Greatness in the Kingdom comes from being a servant.  All of us in our lives have someone who has reached out to us in our time of need.  It might happen at an early age when we run to the safety of our parents.  It might be later when a coach or teacher set us apart and made sure we had a clear understanding of the material needed to pass the test.  In those moments a sense of servanthood was shared with us without us even knowing.

In the year of the pandemic, how often did we hear medical staff and first responders saying what they did was nothing?  Their sacrifice was just a part of their job.  We all know better.  In recent weeks firefighters and personnel worked at evacuation in the west and south.  The east coast saw heroes rescuing those stranded due to the flash flooding.  In all of this, many would say in a humble way, they were just doing what others would do if the situation was reversed.  Those are amazing tales of being a servant.  They see the situation and respond.

All of this leads us to look at how we do this in relationship to spiritual disasters, how do we become responders to those in need of spiritual healing when despair has paralyzed the motions of another?  How do we look deeply into the serious brokenness of those who have given up on God?  How do we serve those who say there is no God?  Being a servant in situations that we can see as the world experiences disasters is easier to focus on.  We see it in front of us.   The emotional and spiritual welfare is sometimes much more hidden.  To be a servant, one must walk in the footsteps of another experiencing their burdens.  The Native Americans ask the young warrior to walk a day in another’s moccasins before settling on any kind of judgment.  How well do we walk in the shoes of another to grasp an understanding of what they are going through before placing judgment upon their actions?

May this week find us walking with the Holy Spirit to be a servant of all,

Father John J. Ouper