For our second week in a row we hear Jesus predict that He will suffer and die upon the cross. It is odd that right after telling His disciples about his suffering upon the cross that Christ finds himself once again explaining His destiny. Last week Christ presented the reality of the cross to His disciples so that they could understand who He truly was. This week Christ desires to get the point across to His disciples that they must also suffer and thus they to will be powerless and vulnerable. The cross is indeed the object that Christ will suffer and die upon, but each of His disciples will join Him upon it as they give witness to their faith. The disciples of Christ would become enshrined within history not because they sought out superstardom, but because they served the Gospel to the point of meeting a martyrs death. For the disciples to arrive at this reality they had to surrender themselves fully to Christ and decide to follow Him by living out humility and service within their own lives.
Each of us here can defiantly feel the tension the lies within our lives concerning this call to humility and service. On one hand we desire to be humble and to give of ourselves, but on the other hand we often allow sin to seep into our lives and effect us to do the complete opposite. We live in a tension where the humility that we strive to live out often seems to be silenced to make way for our own needs and desires. In acting within this manner we are placing ourselves at the center of the world instead of allowing Christ to remain at the center of all of our actions and deeds. In giving service to the Gospel we are not sent into to the world to reach that status the we currently give to an NFL athlete, but are called to lower ourselves like a servant before The Lord. As servants sent out to serve Christ above all things we are truly allowing ourselves to live out the Gospel message within our lives. Living a life dedicated to humility and service we will become truly liberated from all that keeps us from being able to enter into true love.
In our Letter from Saint James we are reminded that we ask, but do not receive because we are asking wrongly and thus are worrying about our passions. Our disordered passions are the very thing that keeps us from being able to truly enter into a relationship of love with God. There are many good things inside of the world, but we often get caught up with them and thus place these wants and needs before our relationship with God. If we allow the virtue of humility to enter our lives we will begin to see how much we have to be thankful for and therefore how much we actually rely upon God. When we commit ourselves to service we should be giving of ourselves through humility by drawing ourselves towards conquering our passions for the sake of God's Kingdom. If we can allow humility and service to enter into the daily actions of our lives we will be able to turn towards God's love not demanding that our needs may be met, but trusting that through our relationship with God and perseverance our needs will be heard.
Our reading from the Book of Wisdom agrees with out need to allow humility and service to work through our actions. This reading observes that many people claim that they are willing to hand themselves fully over to God, but when tested they turn away from their claims. Christ was tested upon the weight of the wood of the cross and was willing to die upon it for each of us. As we allow humility and service to go at work within our lives we cannot trust only when we desire to, but we each must continue to invest ourselves into it fully. To fully invest ourselves in this manner we will be given the strength needed to allow our lives to be transformed in the light of Christ's passion and death. From the challenge of the cross we realize that we are each called to something far greater then being content with going through the motions of giving service to ourselves. We will realize in this light that we are called not to be first, but to become a servant to all whom we encounter.
In order to become servants to all whom we encounter we must learn how to grow in humility and in service. Through the grace of God we have received this invitation that we have been invited to share with Christ in the moment of His greatest vulnerability and selflessness. We become vulnerable and selfless as we give of ourselves through humility and service. The parish community offers to us many opportunities to give of ourselves in this most profound manner. We have the food pantry and the White Elephant on our parish property where we are able to make a small investment with ourselves that produces many unseen fruits. The many people who help in these areas often go unnoticed to the common eye, but they definitely are offering a lot to those who are in need. Our Church and this city offers many ways that we can give of ourselves to those who are in need. If we open our hearts and souls to Christ and allow ourselves to be drawn towards humility and service we will begin to see the beauty of giving of ourselves not for gain, but totally out of love.
Taking up this challenge from our Gospel to give service to one another out of love; may we all find our source of strength within God. May we allow ourselves to come before Him in prayer, so that we can be strengthened as we partake in our mission of service. If we partake of this mission towards service while leavening prayer out of the equation we will be chasing after our own pride where we will be exalted. Through placing our trust in Christ through prayer we will act out with humility as we realize that we are not the source of the world. In this realization that we come to realize through our humility and service we are able to see that we are able to conquer all of our jealousy and hatred. May we therefore allow The Lord to uphold our lives as we allow ourselves to join with the vulnerability and selflessness of Christ through our humility and service.
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