The fundamental attitude to serve

            IT’S amazing that even as Christ was already talking about
his impending passion, death and resurrection, two of his apostles,
James and John, were more interested in occupying special places in
heaven—that they may sit “one at your right and the other at your
left.” (cfr. Mk 10,32-45)

            This elicited a sharp rebuke from Christ and the
clarification that “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.”

            Before saying those words, he told them: “You know that
those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles lord it over
them, and their great ones make their authority over them felt. But it
shall not be so among you.”

            These words are a timely reminder for all of us, and
especially our newly elected public officials, who wield a certain
authority over others due to our position and status in life. They
clearly spell out how our attitude should be with respect to power and
authority that we can have.

            Power and authority is meant for serving. To serve is the
language and the expression of love. It authenticates any affirmation
of love we do, converting it from intention to tangible reality.

            This is the attitude meant for us, with God himself as the
exemplar. Imagine, Christ served us by dying on the cross. Before
that, he shocked his apostles when he insisted that he be allowed to
wash their feet. That was to give an example to them, and us, so that
what he did we would also do to one another.

            The angels too, superior to us in nature, are made to
serve us, following a divine law articulated by Christ himself when he
said: “Let him who is greatest among you become as the youngest, and
him who is the chief as the servant.” (Lk 22,26)

            We need to be more keenly aware of this law. This is truly
what is good for us, providing us with the basic source of strength
and consistency we need as we grapple with life’s endless challenges.

            Before we worry about the big and destructive enemies of
our soul, we have to realize that our most insidious foe is right
within us, when this attitude of serving others is not firmly
established in our mind and heart.

            That it was James and John who made that questionable
request only shows how easy it is for us who try to be close to God to
fall for the tricks of our soul’s enemies.

            They most likely were motivated by the best intentions.
Still, those intentions were wrong. Like them, we could be
subjectively loving, but objectively not so. Thus, the need to
constantly rectify our intentions.

            It is this missing attitude of wanting to serve in each
one of us that sooner or later grows into social and cultural
proportions, then into something global with ideological supporting
structures, that offers the seed, sun and water for the big enemies we
have against our spiritual life.

            The absence of this attitude nullifies whatever big and
ardent professions of love we may have toward God and others. Our
desire to love could not soar into the flight of authentic love when
this eagerness to serve is absent.

            Any attempt to love with this attitude not in place would
be plain mimickry. It would attract many problems and anomalies. It
will drown in the quicksands of pride, vanity, envy, jealousy, and the
other subtle forms of egoism. It cannot survive the mere tests of
differences of characters and opinions, for example.

            This eagerness to serve really has to be worked out,
because with our fallen and wounded nature, every pore of our being
tends to go against the law of love expressed in service that God
meant for us.

            We need to pause and reflect to get a clear view of our
predicament, then beg and pray for God’s grace for we can do nothing
without it, and then little by little, day by day, start to develop
the mind and the skills to bring us always ready and happy to serve.

            Let us remember that the fall of the angels started when
one of them said, “I will not serve.” Our first parents fell because
they too chose to serve themselves instead of God.

            Every sin and moral evil has in its core the virus of not
wanting to serve. And so, perhaps as a motto that we can repeat often,
we should say to ourselves, and to God and all: “Serviam” I will
serve!