Hope For The World
Saturday of the Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time
My dear encountered couples:
Jesus out-out socializes the socialists. “The greatest among you will be the one who serves the rest.”
Many people have a very difficult time letting that sink in. Very often when we do something for someone we expect something in return - at least some esteem and respect in the other person’s mind. To do something nice for an ungrateful person once, maybe even twice, perhaps three times, might not be so hard to do. But to keep it up, to do nice things for the ungrateful and disrespectful over and over and over - well, we have limits, don’t we? Does anybody keep giving of themselves without return? Yes, there are some people who do.
All around us are people who serve others. There are mothers and fathers who do things year after year for ungrateful and disrespectful children. There are teachers who give their every day to ungrateful and disrespectful students - students who can’t wait to graduate and get as far from their teachers as they can. There are nurses who care for the impossible-to-please, the unconscious and the dying who will never be able to pay back their care-givers, at least not in this life.
Jesus, of course, died for a world filled with ungrateful people, people who couldn’t care less what he did for them. He was given a very clear message that his presence wasn’t even welcome on this planet.
There are many great mothers and fathers, great teachers and nurses, along with multitudes of other great people whose names go un-acclaimed. They live their lives doing for others. I’d say that means there is hope for the world. “The greatest among you,” Jesus said, “will be the one who serves the rest.” I suspect he might be talking about you.
