Called to serve

God the Father sent his Divine Son, Jesus Christ, into the world for a purpose, a special mission: to show us, his creatures, how God loves us and serves us. Jesus’ mission also had the purpose to show us how we are called to love and serve God and one another through the love of the Holy Spirit.

Each divine person of the Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, help and serve each other, but they have certain primary roles at which we have only a limited intellectual glimpse.

God the Father primarily serves us by creating us and giving us life. He also serves us by sustaining our life and the life of the natural world so that we can maintain our life by cooperating with the wisdom of the Holy Spirit and the natural world.

We maintain our natural life by eating what the farmers and grocers have for us. We are grateful for their role and service, but we should also be grateful to God who gives us the good earth, the rain and the sun-shine to grow our food, and the justice to keep food affordable.

We maintain our natural life by going to the doctor and sharing with them our health problems. They serve us by fulfilling their role by telling us how we can cooperate with our healing by taking the correct food, medicine, and doing the correct exercises to grow stronger in our health.

We are grateful to God for doctors and nurses, and all those who teach us how to grow in the knowledge of living a healthy natural life. We are thankful because we can’t all be farmers, doctors, nurses, grocers, builders, principals, teachers, etc. at the same time.

This is true also for spiritual life, the supernatural life of saving grace. Jesus Christ serves us by fulfilling the role of redeeming us from sin and death. He shows us how we can grow in our supernatural life, the life of being his disciple and fellow servant to God and one an-other in his Catholic Church through his ordained deacons, priests and bishops, that we might stay on the path to heaven.

Jesus shows us that we are called to humbly accept our role in the natural life of our community, as well as the supernatural life of the church. He calls all of us to be disciples, student followers, but he has made some to be ordained priests, and others to be lay people like doc-tors, nurses, farmers and teachers.

If God calls a person to be a doctor, an avocation, like he called my older brother John, there are certain steps that one must take to fulfill that role. He first had to graduate from college with the courses necessary to be accepted into the School of Medicine. Then he had to succeed in the challenging process of becoming a medical intern, and finally, after about seven years, he became a medical doctor, but his vocation is as a husband and father.

Today my brother is a family doctor, and he serves people by helping them understand how they can cooperate with good food, medicine and exercise to maintain their natural health. But he never stops learning about how to do this better.

There is a similar process in becoming a spiritual doctor, an ordained priest. Even though I had 8 years of seminary formation, and have 32 years experience, I must con-tinue my vocational education to grow in my ability to help parishioners become the best disciples they can be.

This is how I serve God and his people, by becoming the best Catholic disciple I can be as an ordained priest, so that you can be the best Christian disciple you can be.

Last month there was a one hour and a half, “Clergy Town Hall” meeting with regard to PECS (Parish Evangelization Cells) which are the small faith groups that have been formed at our parish. The take away from this meeting was that we need to reenergize these small groups and the parish with the help of the Archdiocese by studying the beauty and power of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

On October 2nd there was a “Clergy Study Day” (generally 10 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.) in which a lay theologian presented to the clergy St. Paul’s love for the Holy Eucharist, and how he advanced and protected the true meaning of this sacred gift through his sacred writings which make up much of the New Testament. Thursday, November 7, there is another “Clergy Study Day” that will touch on the mystery of how the celebration of the Holy Mass is a living icon of Christ’s Paschal Mystery, and the growing reverence due to this reality.

In today’s Gospel, the Apostles James and John wanted to sit on the right and left hand of the throne of Jesus, but they seemed to ignore the other Apostles and disciples. Only God knows who will sit on the right and left of Jesus Christ in his glory, for it will be God the Fa-ther who makes that determination. We disciples, then and now, are called to serve and love God above all things, and everyone in the manner and role God has called us to.

All of us are called to recognize how Jesus, out of an infinite love for us, came to serve God the Father and his people by humbly accepting his role as the redeemer, giv-ing up his life on the cross, so that God the Father could exalt him as divine head of the Church. Jesus Christ is our savior and divine head, and we are called to live a life of service in his love and sanctifying grace by fulfilling the role he gave us with gratitude and humility.

Peace through Jesus Christ and Mary,

Fr. Thomas McCabe