Sometimes we hear something so often that we don’t hear it anymore. In our new homily series, we reflect on the basics – what it means to be a Christian. Not just personal faith, but the communal practice of it. Not simply “I believe”, but “we believe”. Not just “My Father”, but “Our Father”. Last week I was able to reflect on a statement with many from our Church community. A statement that we have heard so often that we run the risk of no longer hearing it, of no longer perceiving its explosive power: “I have not come to be served, but to serve.”

A gutter somewhere in an Indian slum. A journalist accompanies Mother Teresa as she pulls a dying man out of the gutter. He was rotting 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 would like to challenge us to rethink service. “I did not come to be served, but to serve and to give my life.” (cf. Mt 20:28) This means that Jesus‘ goal in life was not to realize himself or to focus on his own well-being. Where the other Gospels report on the first Mass – that is, the moment when Jesus takes bread and says: “My body” and wine and says: “My blood. For you.” -John reports the washing of the feet. Which points to the same thing. He washes the disciples‘ feet. He performs the service of a slave that only the lowest slaves had to perform. And he says: As I have done. So too should you. „We are washed in the blood of the Lamb”, John would claim this in the last book of the Bible. The washing of feet points to Jesus himself, who was rich, but became a slave in order to cleanse not only our feet, but our whole selves from our sins, by dying for us.

Mel Gibson, in his movie “The Passion of the Christ”, magnificently depicts the scene when the Roman centurion pierces Jesus‘ side at the foot of the cross and blood and water miraculously gushes out of Jesus‘ side like a fountain, drenching the astonished and awestruck centurion and making him fall to his knees.

Service. Washing of the feet. John reports on the commission: “I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.” In this context, Jesus speaks his commandment to love. There are 3 words for love in Greek: Eros, passionate love that seeks to appropriate that which is loved. Filia, the love of friends. Agape, the love of surrender, of gift of self. In his commandment of love, Jesus pronounces the commandment using the word „agape“, gift of self. And later, in his letters, John would remember: “whoever claims to abide in him ought to live [just] as he lived.” (1 John 2:6)

Belonging to Christ means participating in his life of self-giving and service. This is the deepest vocation of man. Only here does he find his greatness and his dignity. Nothing less will satisfy him. Here at the John Paul II Center in Vienna, we speak of service as one of our 4 “Core Values”, along with empowerment, commitment and openness. Service is so central to Christian identity that without it we cannot speak of the Christian life.

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of preaching a homily on a mindset that the early church struggled with even in New Testament times: so-called Gnosticism. After mass, I spoke to someone who directly contradicted what I had been trying to explain for 20 minutes. I wasn’t surprised that he held a different opinion. I was surprised that he didn’t realize that he held a different opinion. And that is exactly my point. This way of thinking can strike such profound roots that people call themselves Christian but think as gnostics. And that, without even realizing it.

My thesis here in relation to ministry is precisely this: We are entwined and riddled and surrounded by an ideology of self-creation and self-redemption: you are at the center. Life is about you. Find yourself. Believe in yourself. Live your life. And dear fellow Christians, this thought can take hold of and permeate us. We can go to mass every week and attend a small group and even get involved in a ministry or work of charity here and there and donate to Catholic causes and spend three hours a month peeling potatoes with the Mother Teresa Sisters. And all this without realizing the profound mindset and attitude change so necessary to the Christian calling: I have not come to be served, but to serve and to give my life. We can even put ourselves at the service of others and of God because we want thereby to realize ourselves.

What do I live for? What is my vision of life? The Christian lives to serve. Perhaps we should repeat that again. The Christian lives to serve. God – „behold I am the handmaid of the Lord“ (Mary would say), and neighbor („whoever says that he is in him must also live like him“). The Christian lives to serve. This statement may sound radical, especially at a time when the focus is so strongly on our own well-being and personal self-fulfilment. However, Jesus Christ shows us a different way. 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, many of us are in need of a real conversion on this point. And I mean that in a twofold sense.

First of all, there is the fundamental conversion, without which such a statement about service makes no sense at all. And by that I mean a fundamental conversion to Jesus Christ himself. If one has not yet made the decision to make Jesus Christ the center of ones life, then the statement “The Christian lives to serve” makes no sense. Service is a part of a life that comes out of relationship and following Jesus. Service is a natural consequence of sharing in his life. So if this decision has not been made, if you are still exploring Christianity, you have a free pass here. But if this thought really bothers me, as a professing Christian I have to ask myself whether my conversion to Jesus Christ has already taken place or whether it should be renewed.

“Repent and believe in the gospel“: This is the basic call that Jesus makes at the beginning of his public life. Repent! It is the recognition 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 world began (Ephesians 1) to live an eternal community of love with him, that he wants to fulfill us almost infinitely beyond our wildest dreams and longings. But the breach of relationship, the abuse of freedom, which we also call sin, has broken this relationship with God. But it has not only broken our relationship with God, it also damages our relationship with our fellow human beings. 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 have new access to God, but also through him we are empowered to love our neighbor in a new, deep and intimate way. His passion for our fellow human beings will take hold of us more and more, to the degree that we open ourselves to the powerful working of grace in us. However, this presupposes that a decision has been made for the Lord to allow Him to love us. Conversion is not about proving to Him how much we love Him. It is not a conversion to a performance mindset. On the contrary. Where performance thinking prevails, there is also the danger of the helper syndrome according to the motto: I have to prove something. To myself or to others or to God. But that is not what the convert is about.

The core of conversion is to make Jesus the center of one’s life. No longer as an “add on” or “nice to have” or one priority among many. He, Jesus, is the priority par excellence. Everything else is seen in relation to him. Life makes no sense without him. And that means, first and foremost, saying no to self-creation or self-redemption and saying YES to accepting his love in its entirety, allowing myself to be loved, affirming this, his infinite love. To let myself be filled by it, by the power of the Holy Spirit. The response of service is the power of his love in me. It is a response, not a precondition.

Perhaps the first consequence is therefore simply to verbalize and actuate this conversion to Jesus for the first time or to renew it through a conscious yes in prayer. Perhaps a humble yet determined prayer like that of St. Ignatius of Loyola can help:

Take, Lord, and receive all my freedom, my memory, my mind and all my will, everything I have and possess. You have given it to me; to you, Lord, I give it back. Everything is yours, dispose of me according to your will. Give me only your love and grace, for that is enough for me. Amen.

Even if one disregards the patriotic features of the statement and tries to think about whether a similar question could be asked within the church or congregation, the sentence of US President JFK more than 60 years ago is incomprehensible to 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 wanted to talk about a second conversion. And that concerns us as a Church. As a church community. The above statement would seem almost absurd in the context of the early Church. Because it would simply be assumed. My Brother and my sister were simply those gathered with me around the Sunday Eucharist. “We are all one in Christ”, the early Christian Paul would remind us in his letters in the Bible. For we all eat one body. We receive ourselves as the body of Christ from the Lord at least every Sunday. The concept of „brother“, as it is often used today, i.e. without considering the boundary that exists between those who are outside – i.e. not part of the Church, and those who are part of the Church – is Enlightenment thinking and romanticism because it cannot be realized in concrete terms. And that empties the term of any real punch. It has no depth, does not engage me, does not commit me, does not challenge me to become concrete in love.

I am committed to my brother, my sister. At the same time, I am committed to all those who are not yet so. I suffer from the fact that they are not brother and sister. That we are not yet all one in Christ. That is why the celebration of the Eucharist is always a missionary task. But it is also first and foremost a commitment to a specific group of people. To my brother and sister in my local Church. Who may get on my nerves. But I can’t just shake them off when they don’t suit me.

In one of his books, Pope Benedict XVI expresses the conviction that the Church will only truly regain its missionary thrust when we learn anew to be brother and sister for one another. And in concrete terms, this means learning to wash each other’s feet. To be there for each other. That when people who are not yet brothers and sisters come here to our church commmunity, they would marvel and say with the pagans of Rome: “See how they love one another.” When they are so moved, as a non-believing participant in one of our ministries here at the center once said years ago, “There is so much love in the air.” But service also needs time and space. It requires a conversion from an attitude of consumption that says: What can you give me? to say instead: What can I bring here to the altar and to this congregation and to these specific people? What talents and gifts, time and resources do I have that I can contribute to these brothers and sisters? How can I participate in what is happening here in order to take responsibility for a ministry and not just when it suits me? … But not out of a performance mindset, but because we are filled with his love. Because we are one in him. Because the other is truly 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 lay down my life for many. Where this happens, the Church becomes a prophetic sign. A vestibule of heaven. A messenger from another world. A bridgehead of the kingdom of heaven.

God bless!

P. George LC