Humble Service

A few weeks ago a parishioner approached me for help. She is a member of a wonderful apostolate, the Marian Servants of the Word Incarnate. They live by a Rule of Life that includes prayer, holiness, obedience and service. She would be giving a presentation on the topic of humble service and asked me to recommend books, etc.

As it turned out I decided to offer her a few of my own thoughts on the subject and then, perhaps, search my library for any appropriate books. Due to the press of other obligations, I never got around to looking for the books, but I did manage to pass along those thoughts, which I have included below.

I began by apologizing for the random nature of my thoughts and the lack of a logical progression of ideas, as well as any errors and typos...It was all done in a rush. I've made a few minor changes (and corrections) to what I wrote originally, but the substance remains.
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Humility and Service

As a deacon, I'm very much focused on service, or at least I’m supposed to be, since service is at the very core of our calling as deacons. The words "deacon" and "diaconate" both stem from the Greek word for servant: diaconia. And so this is what we deacons are called to be: quite simply, servants. 

It all harkens back to the first seven deacons who were called to serve at table in the early Church (see Acts 6:1-7). Indeed, this is what led me many years ago to begin serving at the soup kitchen. It just seemed like the normal thing for a deacon to do. And, of course, Diane volunteered to be the Thursday cook, so I really had little choice. If you continue reading Acts 6 and the following chapters you’ll notice that St. Stephen and his brother deacons did far more than wait on tables, but it was all done in a spirit of deep humility.

By the way, most of my service as a deacon was initiated by Diane. For example, she also “volunteered” me to join with her as a hospital chaplain team. And it was her interest in the Bible, founded in her Baptist roots, that led me to consider starting our parish’s Bible Study program. Letting God call us through others can also be humbling and a key element of service.

Indeed, true service can be done only in humility, otherwise it simply isn't service. I can be only humble or prideful; there’s really no in-between. If I try to serve another, but do so in pride, I am really only serving myself, building up my "self-image" as today's psychologist might say. 

For example, the Wildwood Soup Kitchen is a true ecumenical ministry, with volunteers from over 30 churches, plus a synagogue, all helping out as we prepare and serve 300 meals every day. On occasion I ask some of these volunteers why they are there. The responses are varied and interesting:

“It makes me feel good.”

“I like helping others.”

“It’s my way of repaying for all I’ve been given.”

…and many more similar answers. There’s nothing “wrong" with these motives, but they aren’t centered on humble service. Sometimes I’m told, "Because Jesus commands it,” and I suppose that's a better reason. 

But to really serve another completely, I must lower myself and place the other higher. Only then can I see the other as he or she truly is, as a child of God who was loved into existence by the creative Word of God. Jesus, of course, gave us the recipe for this when He said:

“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me” [Mt 25:35-36].

If we see everyone we serve as our Lord, Jesus Christ, then we can be nothing but humble. And we must believe this in our hearts, accepting that God's love extends to all. Failure to accept this is perhaps the greatest obstacle to carrying out the kind of service demanded by our Lord: 

“…whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” [Mk 10:43-45].

As you can see, we are called not only to see Jesus in others – to recognize the Divine Presence in others -- but also to do so in imitation of Jesus. We are called to serve, not to be served, to be a "slave to all.” And that's impossible...without God's help. It's impossible because it is not human, but divine. It is to love as God loves. It’s not something we can do on our own, and so we must turn to God for His help. We must become needy before God and allow Him to serve us.

And so we encounter another of those wonderful Gospel paradoxes. We have a need to serve and to be served. And these two needs -- to serve and be served -- are gifts from God. To turn down a gift from God is a horrible failing, and so we must accept both.

Too many Christians are great at helping others, but hate being helped by others. They want to carry out the call to serve, but don’t want to let others do the same. Of course, it’s apparent what’s behind this failing – the same thing that’s behind almost all of our failings: pride. The truly humble servant is also willing to be served. St. Peter, who seemed to offer a perfect example of so many human failings, typified this unwillingness to be served when, at the Last Supper, he resisted Jesus’ attempts to wash his feet. Jesus has to threaten disinheritance to get Peter to accept this humble service by his God.

Of course, Jesus’ greatest act of humble service is His Passion and Death. St. Paul, in his beautiful Christological Hymn in the Letter to the Philippians, describes this remarkable act of divine humility and service:

“Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” [Phil 2:5-11].

What more do we need? The Christian, then, following the Great Commandment, serves both God and God’s people, and does so in the humility that only God can give.

True humility, you see, is nothing more than a firm grasp of reality. Once you and I contemplate and come to understand, if only partly, the indescribable greatness of God, at the same time we come to realize how truly insignificant we are. It’s hard then to be anything but humble. But we are lifted up knowing that God Himself, in His greatness, chose to become one of us.

In a great example of understatement Paul says, “…He emptied Himself…He humbled Himself…”, and in a perfect, continuing act of humility, Jesus does so again and again, every day on all the altars of the world. He makes Himself sacrificially Present through the Eucharist and actually allows us to take Him into ourselves. Do we ever consider the humility evident in this divine act of service to all of humanity?

Mary is our other great example of humility in service.

Mary, saved from sin, knew she had received a wondrous gift from God. Her call was to accept the gift of God’s Son in the deepest humility.

I don’t have time to address the fullness of Mary’s humility, but I think it’s telling that her first act after the Annunciation was to make the difficult and long trip from Nazareth to Judea to spend several months with her aging relative, Elizabeth, who was awaiting the birth of John the Baptist. Gabriel had just told Mary that she, “full of grace,” would become the mother of the Son of God. This could easily go to a young girl’s head; after all, she would bring forth the Messiah foretold by all the prophets and hoped for by generations of Jews. But in her humility she thinks not of herself but of her kinswoman and makes this remarkable journey of service to another in need.

My father used to say, "Humility's a very strange commodity, because once you know you have it, you just lost it." The saints, of course, were all humble. How could they be anything else? I doubt they even considered this virtue of theirs to be humility. For them it was simply reality. In a sense, humility is the great foundational virtue, the sine qua non without which no other virtue can develop. Without humility all other virtuous attempts will be overrun by pride and buried in the self.

We are, then, challenged to humility and to commit ourselves to a radical and total gift of self to others. Can we imitate the humility of our Lord? Are we committed to seeking ways in which we can serve others, showing them we love and care for them with God’s love?