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March 31 - April 13, 2023
As for me, strange as it may seem, this lack of a natural affinity for prayer, and the interior struggles associated with it, has brought me to an ever-increasing realization that what is difficult in the spiritual life is often necessary.
Theology is for me, as St. Anselm of Canterbury so succinctly put it, “faith seeking understanding.”
Christ the Servant was revealed most fully in Christ the Deacon (Mk 10:25; Mt: 20:28), and in this respect, the saints had a Christological grounding in sacred service and the spirituality that sourced it.
sacred service
so too Jesus’ diaconate — while the perfect example of service — required an order of deacons to perpetuate that service.
While a different tradition,Jesus service as a deacon is perfect example of service
Love of God and love of neighbor (Mk 12:30–31) constitute the universal vocation, that to which all human beings are called.
Servant spirituality is a specific kind of spirituality; it’s a particular way of personally appropriating and responding to the love of God as He is made known through the Servant Mysteries. Broadly speaking, the Servant Mysteries are the revelation of Christ the Servant as He is manifested in the Scriptures, Tradition, Magisterium, and, in particular, the sacrament of the present moment — that is, in the ins and outs of our everyday lives.
servant spirituality
Simply put, a servant spirituality is one in which we can observe the Lord in serving others and, in that observation, encounter Him ourselves.
What is true of Jesus is also true of His Mystical Body, the Church. All, by virtue of Baptism, are called to love one another by serving one another (Jn 13:12–15). This means that the Church is, at her very core, a servant Church, and it’s precisely through this service that she carries out her saving mission. Both
servant Church
Holy Orders as it relates to the whole Church. The Greek word diákonos, commonly rendered as servant or minister,
Add definition of deacon, explain deacon of service
This is what it really means to be a minister of service: not simply a doer of good things, but an envoy of God’s love in the service of which good things are done. The deacon’s service isn’t first and foremost to the people, but to God, and only in God, and with His grace, can he truly serve the people.
What it means to be a minister
Collins’s contribution moves Christian service away from a purely functional work to a deeply relational encounter.
purpose of service
By re-envisioning diakonia and re-anchoring it in the language of the Early Church as an envoy or messenger of divine love, Collins implicitly presupposes an intimate relationship of trust and responsibility between the servant and God. This is why the cultivation of the interior life is essential to living out our “diaconate,” whether it’s as a deacon or laity,
as it provides the “interior place” to know and love the One who sends us. It’s precisely this love that becomes the primary motivation for Christian service, be it as a deacon or layperson.
Motivation for service
Having laid the theological groundwork for a servant spirituality, it’s now time to consider what is often taken for granted: the centrality of the spiritual life. I say “taken for granted” because, in most adult faith formation programs, the spiritual life is assumed rather than addressed; or, if it’s addressed, it’s addressed in a limited manner, minimizing its significance.
yes, not taught
Relationships, if they are healthy, are always mutual.
By sensitizing us to God’s presence in those we serve, and responding in love, we extend the hand of Christ to those in need. In this very process, we’re transformed, since it’s impossible to touch without being touched. To foster a greater intentionality within the exercise of our lives, we need to foster that same intentionality within the interior life. We need to seek Christ the Servant in all things and, in all things, discover Him anew.
Spiritual Formation
To serve others is to perceive a need in them and, to the extent possible, help them satisfy that need. If it’s hunger, we give them food. If it’s faith, we proclaim the Good News. If it’s loneliness, we give them company. Sometimes this means doing something, most times it just means being present. In either case, our sensitivity to the needs of others, and consequently the desire to serve, arises not so much from a particular situation, but first and foremost in our interiority.
What it means to serve
This happens when we busy ourselves with exterior acts of ministry as a way to avoid the much harder work associated with cultivating the interior life. Indeed, it’s quite possible to hide behind our works believing that, because we exercise this ministry or that, we are exempt from the labor that accompanies growth in the spiritual life. This “ticket punching” mentality leaves the practitioner spiritually empty and, in its most extreme, like “whitewashed tombs” (Mt 23:27).
serving without Spiritual Formation
Divine abandonment means surrendering our lives to God’s will. The term surrender, as it relates to abandonment, is quite instructive. In its broadest sense, it means to stop fighting. Surrender presupposes and reveals the interior battle we all experience as a result of our fallen yet redeemed nature.
Surrender to God represents the first step to union with Him, for it’s nothing less than an act of love. It represents an abandonment of the will that, paradoxically, enables us to more fully appropriate and refine it. This truth enabled Saint Augustine to boldly proclaim, “Love God and do what you will.”6
This bond of love means that His desires become our desires, His choices become our choices, and His mission becomes our mission. Here we don’t lose our identity, but instead discover it, becoming more fully who we are. Divine love, when accepted and internalized, makes possible an incarnation of sorts, enabling us, as Christians, to bear witness to Christ the Servant.
As St. Paul of the Cross observed, “By habitually thinking of the presence of God, we succeed in praying twenty-four hours a day. The continual remembrance of the presence of God engenders in the soul a divine state.”
This understanding of God is important to our consideration of abandonment because we can tend to see the spiritual life as a zero-sum gain. This is to say, the more I give to God, the less there is for me, my spouse, my children, my ministry, etc. In a zero-sum gain each participant’s gain or loss is proportionate to the gains or losses of the others. Perhaps an example would prove helpful. My wife and I are blessed with many children. Over the years, as the numbers grew, well-intended people have asked, “How do you do it?” The unspoken assumption has been that the love and strength that
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CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SERVANT MYSTERIES
Big Add: Characteristics of Servant Mysteries, Theological Review
It’s instructive to note that the English word sacrifice is made up of two Latin words: the verb facere which means “to make,” and the noun sanctus, which means “holy.” This means that to love sacrificially is to make holy not only the one being loved, but the one who loves; not only the one being served, but the one who serves. This is the transformative power of grace. In the biblical sense, holiness refers to a state of being set apart from sin and set apart for God. Sacrificial love consecrates those who actively participate in it. Understood this way, servant spirituality, when exercised
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Spritual formation of service
