Deacon Tim’s Column
September 20, 2009
25th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Today’s Gospel passage is all too familiar. Jesus is journeying with his disciples and he starts to prepare them for his upcoming passion, death and resurrection. Instead of listening to him they start to be concerned with who is the greatest among them. The disciples actually weren’t looking for earthly fame and fortune. What they were arguing about was who was going to be the best servant. How could you serve the Lord in the best way possible, to be the best servant? Jesus reminded them that the best servant was the one who serves quietly and who appears to be the most vulnerable and need the most amount of care. This is the one who can teach us what it means to be Christ-like. As an example, he takes a little child and places it in their midst and tells them that the person who receives this child in his name receives not only Jesus, but the one who sent him.
Sometimes we can take this idea of being the servant of all and turn it around into something that it shouldn’t be. We try to become what the disciples were arguing about…who’s the greatest servant, how many committees do we serve on, how many programs do we donate our time to, how much time do we spend in prayer? In thinking of this idea of serving, I was reminded of a fairly famous gangster in Chicago from the 1920’s, Al Capone. By 1929 the Great Depression had hold of the U.S. In major cities all over there were bread lines, soup kitchens and desperate taken people. In Chicago, the most notorious gangster of the Prohibition Era, Al Capone set out on a PR campaign. He provided food and started soup kitchens for people in the City of Chicago. I would hope that Mr. Capone did that out of the goodness of his heart and for the sake of his less fortunate brothers and sisters. I’m sure that God took that into consideration when Mr. Capone died. If he truly wanted to be a servant and be Christ-like, chances are he wouldn’t have led the kind of life that he did and have been responsible for the numerous murders which occurred during Prohibition in Chicago (especially the notorious St. Valentine’s Day Massacre).
This idea of being servant of all then is not just all about the externals. So much of our servanthood depends on our interior disposition as well as our motives in serving. In the second reading today from the Letter of James, he tells us that “. . . the wisdom from above is first of all pure, then peaceable, gentle, compliant, full of mercy and good fruits, without inconstancy or insincerity.” This wisdom he is talking about is an excellent description of of what should be in our hearts when we truly become “servants.”
Come Holy Spirit grant us the Spirit of fear and awe, that we may be filled with a loving reverence toward God and avoid doing anything that may displease him.
Deacon Tim 734-502-1818
deacontim@tds.net
http://shamrockdeacon/blogspot.com
BLESSING OF PETS – Sunday, October 4, 2009 (the feast of St. Francis of Assisi). At 2:00 p.m. we will have the blessing of pets in the small parking lot next to the day chapel. All pets, dogs, cats, gerbils, rabbits, fish, etc., are welcome.