For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45).
As this saying of Jesus makes clear, service belongs to the most fundamental vocabulary of the Christian faith. It provides the basis for Jesus’ articulation of his own identity and vocation as Son of Man. It is therefore a privileged window into the mystery of the Person of Christ himself, who, “though he was in the form of God, did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. . . . And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:5-7).
These passages provide a fundamental biblical rationale for service as an intrinsic element of Christian life. Paul admonishes the Philippians to have the “mind” of Christ, which he then describes, as cited above, in terms of self-emptying service. And in Mark, just before the passage cited above, Jesus famously had enjoined his disciples, “You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones make their authority felt. But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you will be the servant of all” (Mark 10:42-44).
There is also the beautiful parallel passage in Luke, where Jesus is speaking, significantly enough, just after the institution of the Eucharist, when the disciples, in a complete and ironic non sequitur, start arguing about who among them is the greatest, as though they had not heard a thing Jesus had said about the Eucharist. Jesus responds, again commenting on leadership: “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them. . . . But it must not be so among you; rather let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. For which is greater, one who sits at table, or one who serves? Is it not the one who sits at table? But I am among you as one who serves” (Luke 22:25-27). Origen comments on Luke 22:27 as follows, connecting it to Phil 2.5-7:
Everyone who has understood how Jesus was to his disciples, not as the one who is at table, but as the one who serves, since the Son of God took the form of a servant for the freedom of those enslaved to sin, will not fail to recognize how the Father says to him, “You are my servant” (Is 49:3) and “This is a great thing for you, that you are called my servant” (Is 49:6). For we must dare say that the goodness of Christ appeared greater and more divine and truly in accordance with the image of the Father when “he humbled himself and became obedient unto death . . . willing to become a servant for the salvation of the world (Commentary on John 1.230-31).
From these passages we can see some of the intrinsic characteristics of service, theologically speaking: it is essentially (a) a work of love, (b) an expression of humility, of the mind of Christ who chose to serve rather than to exert his own status or privilege, (c) a gift of one’s life or self (d) on behalf of others who are not able to serve themselves, and ultimately (e) it has the power of imaging God the Father and hence the Trinity. Of course, Jesus embodies this service in a unique way, but as configured to him, our works of love on behalf of our neighbors echo his servanthood and our service undertaken in his spirit represents it to others.
A special dimension of Christian service arises from a related text on the Incarnation: “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich” (2 Cor 8:9). We encounter, in Christ’s self-emptied state, his poverty, a voluntary impoverishment relative to his eternal status as “form of God.” Paul recognizes that he took on the poverty of our human condition, with all of its vulnerabilities—mortality in all of its liabilities to suffering and death and all of the various fragilities and limitations, the insecurity, associated with finitude. We recognize his poverty as our poverty, the poverty of the human condition, which is particularly evident in the material poverty that so accentuates all of the vulnerabilities of human nature as such. We see this reflected in the particular circumstances of the Incarnation: the birth of Jesus in an outbuilding, rejected from the comfort of the inn, and subject to the threat of violence so that he had to flee for his life as a refugee.
Commenting on 2 Cor 8:9 Augustine notes,
Does it offend you to see him, who led a poor life in this world although he was the world’s Creator, scorned by the rich? Christ renounced all that human beings hold dear not because he lacked the power to possess them, but because he chose not to have those things in order to show us that they are to be treated as unimportant; and therefore all who set store by such things despise Him (En. In Ps. 31:19).
Here we find the Christological basis for what is called the preferential option for the poor (see Compendium of Catholic Social Teaching, §182). Jesus “preferred” all that we do not “prefer” or privilege, and in renouncing our preferences—for social status, wealth, prestige, and power—he called us to change our preferences to be in alignment with his. Augustine, in the same sermon, comments that
Blessed is everyone who understands about [Christ] the needy and poor man. Keep in mind all the poor, needy, hungry, and thirsty people, travelers far from home, the ill-clad, the sick, the prisoners. Try to understand about a poor person of this sort, because if you do, you will understand about Him who said, I was hungry, I was thirsty, naked, a stranger, sick and in prison (Matt 25:35-36).
So we cannot “see” the poverty of Christ if the poor and needy, the alien and the ill and the imprisoned, are invisible to us. Contrariwise, if we deeply consider the poverty of Christ, we will begin to lift the poor from their invisibility. When this happens, we will see more people than we may have expected, not only the economically poor but those whose neediness in any way and in any situation, be it social, familial, ecclesial or at work, causes us to recognize Christ in them and his claim on our service of love. We include, too, all of the people whom we may, for one reason or another, regard as inconvenient. And, in fact, anyone whose dignity as a human being is under assault. We talk about both the corporal and the spiritual works of mercy as descriptions of the service owed in response to the human dignity that is insulted or even outraged in the case of anyone in need.
The contours of Christian service articulated above, and the description of those to whom such service is owed preferentially, show that Christian service, while it certainly includes the quest for justice, cannot at the same time be reduced to it. Benedict XVI’s encyclical letter God is Love, one of the most recent and sustained reflections on Christian service, notes that “the promotion of justice through efforts to bring about openness of mind and will to the demands of the common good is something which concerns the Church deeply” (God is Love, §28a). At the same time,
There is no ordering of the State so just that it can eliminate the need for a service of love. Whoever wants to eliminate love is preparing to eliminate the human being as such. There will always be suffering which cries out for consolation and help. There will always be loneliness. There will always be situations of material need where help in the form of concrete love of neighbor is indispensable. The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person—every person—needs: namely, loving personal concern (God is Love, §28b).
The ideal towards which Christian service aspires to contribute was denominated by Paul VI as a “civilization of love” which is more than simply a just society. Each of the popes after Paul VI spoke of this ideal, and none more forcefully than John Paul II, who emphasized that justice on its own could not create a truly humane civilization:
Christians know that love is the reason for God’s entering into relationship with man. And it is love which he awaits as man’s response. Consequently, love is also the loftiest and most noble form of relationship possible between human beings. Love must thus enliven every sector of human life and extend to the international order. Only a humanity in which there reigns the “civilization of love” will be able to enjoy authentic and lasting peace (Dec. 8, 2003).
Such a civilization is one where the ideal of Christian service has penetrated all social groupings and structures, from the family to the global community, and, in accordance with the essential features of service identified above, it will always require sacrifice or self-gift in humility. As JPII says at the beginning of Lent, 1986:
At this beginning of Lent, the season of penance, reflection, and generosity, Christ appeals to all of you once more. The Church wishes to be present in the world and especially in the world of suffering, and she counts on you. The sacrifices which you make, however small, will save bodies and bring fresh life to souls, and the expression “civilization of love” will no longer be devoid of meaning. Charity does not hesitate, for it is the expression of our faith. So open your hands wide and share with all those who are your neighbors. “Through love be servants of one another” (Gal 5:13; emphasis added).
Finally, formation in an ethos of service has a Eucharistic dimension that is intrinsic to it, which Luke already had hinted at by his placement of the discussion about leadership. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, “The Eucharist commits us to the poor” (CCC §1397), a sentiment that goes back all the way to Justin Martyr and even earlier. The Eucharist is the sacramental re-presentation of the self-gift or sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, making it present such that all who receive Holy Communion are united with the love that prompted Christ’s sacrifice, and they are formed together in that love. We say, again following the Catechism, that “The Eucharist makes the Church” (§1396), for “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor 10:16-17, cited in CCC §1396).
This means that the Church is formed in and by a love that is intrinsically ordered to service, that is, the self-emptying sacrifice of Christ, who took the form of a servant and was obedient in that service to the point of death on the Cross. The Eucharist therefore creates what Benedict XVI calls a “sacramental mysticism” which is irreducibly also a “social mysticism”:
This sacramental “mysticism” is social in character, for in sacramental communion I become one with the Lord, like all the other communicants. As Saint Paul says, “Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Cor 10:17). Union with Christ is also union with all those to whom he gives himself. I cannot possess Christ just for myself; I can belong to him only in union with all those who have become, or who will become, his own (God is Love, §14).
Eucharistic formation means that the Church is united by a love that is not inward- but outward-looking, the love by which the Father “so loved the world” (John 3:16) that he gave his only Son, and his Son gave himself. Eucharistic practice increasingly trains us as members of Christ’s body to see, more and more, all of the world as God’s Beloved, so that those whom God “so loved” rise more and more to visibility, especially those whom we had been inclined not to see, the poor, those who are in any way needy, whose poverty and need tends to make them invisible to us as we pursue other goods such as wealth and autonomy. Seeing the Eucharistic Lord means seeing the vulnerability in which he gave himself in all of the vulnerable who have a claim on our service. Thus, Benedict can say that “‘Worship’ itself, Eucharistic communion, includes the reality both of being loved and of loving others in turn. A Eucharist which does not pass over into the concrete practice of love is intrinsically fragmented” (ibid.).
One more element of the theology of service which should not be overlooked is that it has a Marian dimension. Pope Saint John Paul II wrote that “In the Eucharist, the Church is completely united to Christ and his sacrifice, and makes her own the spirit of Mary. This truth can be understood more deeply by rereading the Magnificat in a Eucharistic key” (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, §58). He gives several examples of what he means, including this one:
The Magnificat reflects the eschatological tension of the Eucharist. Every time the Son of God comes again to us in the “poverty” of the sacramental signs of bread and wine, the seeds of that new history wherein the mighty are “put down from their thrones” and “those of low degree are exalted” (Luke 1:52), take root in the world. Mary sings of the “new heavens” and the “new earth” which find in the Eucharist their anticipation and in some sense their program and plan (ibid.).
Devotion to Mary can therefore generate a sensitivity to the exigencies for service that are all around us but we may not see because we are not invested in seeing them. Devotion to Mary enlarges our hearts and attunes our spiritual senses to those whose suffering qualifies them as “those of low degree.” Suffering tends to diminish and erase people. Suffering creates vulnerabilities and, especially if it is chronic or disfiguring, prompts us to look away. Mary did not turn away from the suffering of the only truly innocent victim, her Son, the Man of Sorrows, and she herself suffered his sufferings as though they were her own because they were her only Son’s. Devotion to Mary forms us in her sensibilities toward the sufferings of her Son, which are concrete, those of her flesh and blood, and not abstract, like a theological concept. The more we are formed in her sensibilities though devotion to her, the more those sufferings become concrete to us, and we begin to see them, his sufferings, all around us, crying out for help, for our loving service.
What I have offered in this brief compass is not, of course, a complete theory of service in the Catholic tradition or a charter for any organization, but perhaps it offers a biblically based spirituality and theology of service that can provide some vocabulary to think with and some suggestions for what one might emphasize in setting up or executing service programming. Hopefully it is flexible enough to provide guidance for the formation of those working in Catholic service organizations in modes of service that are not “one size fits all” and that are congruent with what local circumstances and particular cultural ideals might require, without losing, at the same time, a universal vision within a global context.
