To the Point of Death

A gutter somewhere in an Indian slum. A journalist accompanies Mother Teresa as she pulls a dying man out of the gutter. His body was rotting while he was still alive. The stench was almost unbearable. The journalist called out to Mother Teresa, “I wouldn’t do that for a million dollars.” She replied, “Neither would I.”

I want to challenge us to rethink service. “I have not come to be served, but to serve and to give my life.” (Mt 20:28) This means that Jesus’ life goal was not self-fulfillment or placing his own well-being at the center. Where the other Gospels recount the first Mass, the moment when Jesus takes bread and says, “This is my body,” and takes wine and says, “This is my blood. For you.” John instead tells the story of the washing of the feet. This points to the same reality. Jesus washes the disciples’ feet. He performs the work of a slave, a task reserved for the lowest servants. And he says: As I have done, so you should do. “We are washed in the blood of the Lamb,” John would later proclaim in the final book of the Bible. The washing of the feet points to Jesus, who was rich but became a servant not only to wash our feet, but to cleanse us entirely from our sins by dying for us.

Mel Gibson powerfully portrays this moment in his film The Passion of the Christ, when the Roman centurion pierces Jesus’ side at the foot of the cross, and in a miraculous way blood and water gush forth from Jesus’ side like a spring, soaking the astonished centurion and moving him to fall to his knees in worship.
Service. The washing of the feet. John recounts Jesus’ mandate: “I have given you an example; as I have done for you, so you also should do.” In this context, Jesus proclaims his commandment of love. In Greek, there are three words for love: eros, passionate love; philia, the love of friendship; and agape, the love of self-giving. In the commandment of love, Jesus speaks of agape. Later, in his letters, John would write: “Whoever claims to abide in him must live as he lived.” (1 Jn 2:6)

Belonging to Christ means sharing in his life of self-giving and service. This is deeply the vocation of the human person. Only here does humanity find its true greatness and dignity. Nothing less will satisfy. Here at the John Paul II Center in Vienna, we speak of service as one of our four core values, alongside empowerment, engagement, and openness. Service is so central to Christian identity that without it, one cannot truly speak of Christian life.

The Issue of Self-Salvation

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to preach about a way of thinking that the early Church was already struggling with in the time of the New Testament: so-called Gnosticism. After Mass, I spoke with someone who directly contradicted what I had spent twenty minutes trying to explain. What surprised me was not that he held a different opinion, but that he didn’t even realize he did. And that was exactly my point. This mindset can take such deep root that one may call oneself Christian while thinking in a gnostic way without even noticing it. My thesis here, especially in relation to service, is precisely this: we are surrounded, shaped, and battered by an ideology of self-creation and self-salvation. You are at the center. Life is about you. Find yourself. Believe in yourself. Live your life. And dear fellow Christians, this way of thinking can take hold of us and animate us from within. We can go to Mass every week, attend a small group, even serve here and there, donate to Caritas, and spend three hours a month peeling potatoes with the Sisters of Mother Teresa without realizing what it is actually all about. “I have not come to be served, but to serve and to give my life.” We can even place ourselves at the service of others in order to fulfill ourselves.

This is about a fundamental attitude toward life. What do I live for? What is my vision for life? The Christian lives to serve. Perhaps we should repeat that. The Christian lives to serve. God- “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord,” as Mary would say. One’s neighbor “Whoever claims to abide in him must live as he lived.” The Christian lives to serve. This statement may sound radical, especially in a time when personal well-being and self-fulfillment are so strongly emphasized. Yet Jesus Christ shows us a different path. And yes, we must also learn to love ourselves as God loves us. And yet the Christian lives to serve. “I wouldn’t do that for a million dollars.” “Neither would I.” Dear fellow Christians, dear community, many of us are in need of a true conversion at this point and I mean that in a twofold sense.

What does it mean to convert?

First of all, there is a fundamental conversion without which such a statement about service would make no sense at all. And by this I mean the fundamental conversion to Jesus Christ himself. So if you have not yet made the decision to make Jesus Christ the center of your life, then the statement “The Christian lives in order to serve” makes no sense. Service is a component of a life that flows from relationship with and discipleship of Jesus. Service is a natural consequence of sharing in his life. In this sense, you have a free pass. If this idea deeply troubles me as a professing Christian, then I must ask myself whether my conversion to Jesus Christ has truly taken place at all or whether it needs to be renewed.

“Repent and believe in the Gospel”: this is the fundamental call Jesus proclaims at the beginning of his public ministry. Repent! It is the acknowledgment that God has created us wonderfully, that he has a glorious plan for each and every one of us, that he chose us before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1) to live in an eternal communion of love with him, that he desires to fulfill us far beyond our boldest dreams and longings. Yet the rupture of relationship the misuse of freedom, which we also call sin has broken this relationship with God. And it has not only damaged our relationship with God, but also harmed our relationships with one another. Through his death out of love, Jesus Christ restores this relationship and calls each of us to accept him as our Savior and Lord. Through him we gain new access to God, and through him we are also empowered to love our neighbor in a new, deep, and intimate way. His passion for others increasingly takes hold of us. But this presupposes that a decision has been made for the Lord a decision to allow ourselves to be loved by him. Conversion does not consist in proving to him how much we love him. It is not a conversion to a mindset of performance. On the contrary, where performance thinking dominates, there is also the danger of a “helper syndrome,” driven by the attitude: I have to prove something to myself or to others. That is not what conversion is about.

At the heart of conversion is making Jesus the center of one’s life. No longer as an “add-on,” a “nice to have,” or one priority among many. He is the priority, pure and simple. Everything else is seen in relation to him. Life makes no sense without him. And this means, first of all, saying no to self-creation or self-redemption, and saying a wholehearted YES to fully accepting his love to allowing oneself to be loved, to affirming his infinite love, to letting oneself be filled by it through the power of the Holy Spirit. The response of service flows from the power of his love within me. It is a response, not a precondition.

Perhaps, then, the first consequence is simply whether for the first time or anew to renew this conversion to Jesus through a conscious yes. Perhaps a prayer like that of St. Ignatius of Loyola can help:

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will,
all that I have and possess.
You have given all to me; to you, Lord, I return it.
All is yours; dispose of it wholly according to your will.
Give me only your love and your grace, for that is enough for me. Amen.

Even if one sets aside the patriotic undertones of the statement and tries to consider whether a similar question could not also be asked within the Church or a parish community, the words of U.S. President JFK more than 60 years ago meet with incomprehension in modern, individualistic, and self-centered ears: Don’t ask what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country.

I also wanted to speak about a second conversion. And this one concerns us as Church, as a parish community. The statement above would have seemed almost absurd in an early Christian context, because it would simply have been taken for granted. Brother and sister were simply those who were gathered with me around the Sunday Eucharistic celebration. “We are all one in Christ,” the early Christian Paul reminds us in his letters in the Bible. For we all partake of one body. At least every Sunday, we receive ourselves as the Body of Christ from the Lord. The concept of brotherhood as it is often used today without recognizing the boundary between those who are outside, that is, not part of the Church, and those who are part of the Church is Enlightenment-inspired and romantic, because it is not concretely realizable. And as a result, it becomes empty. It has no depth, makes no claim on me, does not bind me, does not challenge me to make love concrete.

I know myself to be obligated to my brother and my sister and at the same time, on this Mission Sunday, to all those who are not. I suffer from the fact that they are not brothers and sisters, that we are not yet all one in Christ. That is why the Eucharistic celebration is always a missionary mandate. But it is also, first of all, a commitment to a concrete group of people: my brother and my sister. Those who may get on my nerves, but whom I cannot simply shake off when they do not suit me.

Pope Benedict XVI expresses in a book his conviction that the Church will only regain true missionary dynamism when we relearn how to be brothers and sisters to one another. And that means very concretely: when we relearn how to wash one another’s feet, to be there for one another. So that when people who are not yet brothers and sisters come here, they are amazed and say, like the pagans of Rome, “See how they love one another.” When they are so deeply moved, as a non-believing participant in one of our ministries here at the Center said years ago: “There is so much love in the air.” But service also very concretely requires time and space. It requires a conversion away from a consumer mindset that asks: What can you give me? Instead of: What can I bring here to the altar, to this community, and to these concrete people? What talents and gifts, time and resources do I have that I can contribute for my brothers and sisters? How can I take part in what is happening here, assume responsibility for a service, and not only when it suits me? … But not out of a mindset of performance, rather because we are filled with his love. Because we are one in him. Because the other truly is my brother in Christ, my sister in Christ or could be. Because I too have not come to be served, but to serve and to give my life for many. Where this happens, the Church becomes a prophetic sign: a forecourt of heaven, an ambassador from another world, a bridgehead of the Kingdom of Heaven.

God’s blessing!

P. George LC