From today’s Magnificat reflection by Servant of God Catherine de Hueck Doherty. The Gospel reading is Matthew 25:31-46–“As you have done to the least of these, so you have done unto me”…
“With him, through him, in him we too can redeem the wrold. Here we make the application: our doing little things well with love–dishwashing, for example–making the connections between our routine daily life and work and the graces it brings to others, perhaps on the other side of the world. It isn’t only death, and the pain leading to death…that we can offer, but our whole life. Put yourself on the paten, so to speak…
We must be food and drink for our brethren…We must feed our brethren, feed them with our love, awareness, concern, empathy, sympathy. In a word, we must lay down our lives for others.”
I love this. Matthew 25 is heady, hard stuff. I can tend to feel guilty when I read the passage because I’m not volunteering on a soup line or bandaging sores. (A preoccupation that’s in itself hopelessly self-centered: as a friend and I observed the other day, Jesus tells us to be childlike–do we ever see children wringing their hands and wondering, Am I doing ENOUGH?)
Doherty reminds me that what little I am able to give and do give at least comes from the deepest part of me. I share my wounds, my struggles, my failings and faults, the debacles that often attend my earthly pilgrimage, my sometimes cranky views, my unabashed love for Christ.
And in return, I receive all of that back from others, as well as the joys, little victories, awe, wonder, and questions, struggles, suffering and pain of my readers and fellows.
I have worked in soup lines and it is good, self-sacrificing work that I much admire. But we are not all meant to serve in the same way. Would I expect a nurse to write a weekly arts and culture column (with all the hours of pondering, study, prayer and research that precede the actual writing), for example, on top of her own massive daily service, and then judge her for failing to do so? No! So why do I judge myself?
Also, what compels me, personally, more than serving soup is a eucharistic sharing of the substance of our lives, which entails encouraging and supporting people in their quest to get into up and running shape to buy their own soup, and in turn, in whatever way is given to them, to serve others…
For me, that is a laying down of my ENTIRE life, body, soul, mind, strength…It requires a certain kind of vulnerability (and possibly exhibitionism) that is not given to all! Which, however much of a labor, feeds me, rather than drains me, as certain other kinds of service tend to do.
“You can’t transmit something you haven’t got,” I’ve heard said. And to transmit any kind of good cheer, hope, sanity, interest, and joy requires constant work, study and prayer–the knowledge that I often fail or fall short or overreach–the monastic life to which I’ve always been drawn and that with unutterable and unmerited grace I do feel I’m living more and more fully…
Here are some more thoughts on the First Week of Lent:
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