The Mystery of Ministry
The
Sixteenth Sunday of The Year: July 17, 2016 (Year C)
Inventory
The Responsorial
Psalm answers the question, “Who may abide in your tent? Who may dwell on
your holy mountain?” The answer is, “Those
who do justice shall live in the presence of the Lord” (Psalm 15).
What does it mean to live “in the
presence of the Lord”? Does it depend on our environment? On how quiet or busy
we are? Does ministry distract us from God? What enables us to be always
conscious of God?
Input
The Entrance
Antiphon tells us, first of all, that everything depends on God: “God himself is my help. The Lord upholds my
life.” But a lot depends on the attitude we have toward what we do: “I will offer you a willing sacrifice.”
The question is not how busy we are, but how willing we are to be doing what we
are doing.
Finally, the Entrance Antiphon gives us a practical suggestion: a crucial one: “I will praise your name for its goodness.”
We need to include praise in our
“rule of life” — deliberately choosing to express
praise — consciously, consistently,
constantly expressing admiration and gratitude for everything we see that is
good, both in God and in every person we deal with. Praise is a way of life. It
fosters appreciation and awareness. It keeps us in the presence of God.
Both options for the Opening Prayer focus us on the “gift of life” — the “new life” that gives us a “new purpose” (Prayer After Communion) And they identify it with the form it takes
in action in us: “faith, hope and love.”
To live in the presence of God is to be consciously “alive in Christ Jesus.” For this to become our way of life, we need
to be “always eager to serve,” “watchful in prayer,” and “true to Christ’s teaching.” The readings
will expand on this.
To
“do justice,” serve
Genesis
18: 1-10
shows us Abraham “doing justice” by observing the sacred custom of hospitality.
And, whether he knows it or not, he is in the special presence of God. The
story, from different traditions, says “the Lord appeared to Abraham” and that
his visitors were “three men,” the same as the “two angels” who visited Lot (in
18:16, “men” set out, but in 19:1 “angels” arrived). It was in any case an
experience of the divine, as it is for us when we minister to others in “mutual
love.” In serving others we may be “entertaining angels without knowing it”
(Hebrews 13:2).
If we remain “watchful in prayer” and
“true to Christ’s teaching,” we will know that in ministering to others we are
serving Jesus himself: “as often as you did it for one of my least brothers or
sisters, you did it for me.” Those who minister in faith are always
in the presence of the Lord (Matthew 25:40).
What
is ministry?
Luke
10: 38-42
shows two sisters ministering in different ways. One was in the “presence of
the Lord” and one wasn’t – but not for the reason we might think.
Mary is often presented as a symbol of
the contemplative life, a life of withdrawal from the world, of silence and
prayer, while Martha is a symbol of the active life, a life absorbed in service
and ministry to others. Both presentations are wrong.
First of all, prayer is ministry. When
we pray for others we are serving them and ministering to them as truly as if
we were teaching, preaching, nursing in a hospital, raising children, or
meeting people’s needs through business. No one’s need is ever met adequately
without the involvement of God:
Unless the LORD
build the house, they labor in vain who build it. Unless the LORD guard the
city, in vain does the guard keep vigil. It is in vain for you to rise early or
put off your rest, you that eat hard-earned bread, for he gives to his beloved
in sleep (Psalm 127).
Prayer is a service to society. And this
includes the prayer of discipleship,
listening to God, because those who think when they pray are the ears of
the nation.
It is also a mistake to restrict the
“contemplative” life to those who are not caught up in the business and
busy-ness of this world. St. Thomas Aquinas, using the Aristotelian principle
that “the nature of anything is determined by its end,” defines a “contemplative”
as anyone whose goal in life is to
arrive at the “perfection of divine love,” regardless of how many hours one
spends in activities or in silent prayer. He argues that this goal presupposes
one is intent on growing in loving
knowledge of God, without which the “perfection of love” is impossible. And
so, regardless of how fully or successfully one is engaged in cultivating it,
if this loving knowledge is one’s goal, one is in the “contemplative life” (See
David M. Knight, “The Active-Contemplative Problem in Religious Life,” Review for Religious Vol. 35, 1976/4,
pp. 497 ff.).
So, no matter how much time we spend in
religious activities, whether in prayer or in ministry, we need to ask about
our goal. Many sincerely “religious” people have never accepted “the perfection
of love” as their goal; nor does this end determine their way of life. They are
content to just “keep in bounds,” helping people when they feel they can, doing
all the things they are supposed to do, without any explicit desire to grow in faith, hope and love. If asked
what Jesus meant when he said, “I came that they might have life and have it to the full,” they would probably
answer, “Heaven.” Whatever fullness of life they are seeking on earth, they do
not identify it with growing in knowledge
and love of God.
These are in the “active” rather than
the “contemplative” life, because their highest purpose is just to do what has
to be done — or even much more than that, serving others generously — without
the express purpose of growing into deeper
and deeper union with the person of God. They have not chosen the “better
part.”
When Jesus reproached Martha for being
“worried and distracted by many things,” and said, “There is need of only one
thing: Mary has chosen the better part,” his point was that Mary was
distracted, not that she was busy. She was not “watchful in prayer” while she was working. If she had been, and had
been aware in faith of what she was doing, she would have been just as much “at
the Lord’s feet” as Mary was, whether “seated” at them or not.
Another problem is that Mary was not
truly offering “a willing sacrifice.”
She was not really “eager to serve,”
because she complained, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do
all the work?” To “do justice” in the
way that enables us to “live in the
presence of the Lord” we have to minister with willing hearts — which is
not the same as feeling like doing
what we are doing! It just means that, like Jesus on the cross, there is
nothing else we would choose to be doing at the time. To give ourselves to
ministry in this way is to be united to Christ in heart and will. That is to “live in the presence of the Lord.”
Ministry
and Mystery
In Colossians
1: 24-28 Paul takes ministry into mystery. The key to his preaching and teaching,
here as elsewhere, is the mystery of Christ
in us.
This is the
mystery that has been hidden from ages and generations past but now revealed to
his holy ones. God has willed to make known to them the glory beyond price
which this mystery brings to the Gentiles — the
mystery of Christ in you, your hope of glory.
No matter how absorbed we are in works
of ministry, or in any other work (although if we are “true to Christ’s
teaching” we will understand everything we do as ministry), we will be always
“in the presence of the Lord” provided we understand that Jesus is working with us, in us and through us.
For this we have to understand that by
Baptism we have become Christ. That
is why Paul could say, “In my own flesh I fill up what is lacking in the
sufferings of Christ.” Christ’s sacrifice on the cross was complete, lacking in
nothing. But for his new life to be extended to the world, Jesus has to go on
“suffering” —enduring the labor and difficulties, the trials, hardships and
frustrations attendant on all ministry and service to others — in his present
body on earth, which we are. Paul knew that in him Jesus worked and suffered
and continued his mission on earth. His ministry was an experience of being
united to Christ, of being Christ.
This was Paul’s way of life: to be Christ: “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” To
live in the presence of God is to live conscious of this. To keep ourselves
conscious of this is to live always in the presence of God.
Paul said this is the mystery, “the
Christ we proclaim… and teach… in the full measure of wisdom, hoping to make
every person complete” — to make every Christian “mature in Christ.”
Insight
Do I see a connection between humility
and patience? Humility and love?
Initiative:
Give God’s life:
When fear or impatience inclines you to
push things--or to use power—surrender all power to God and pray to the Holy
Spirit for guidance. Give life by loving.
