+Love Means Service....To Love Is To Serve
A Reflection by Sr. Barbara DeMoranville, MSBT
General Custodian of the Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity
On the Occasion of the Margaret Healy Leadership Assembly
of the Missionary Cenacle Apostolate
Holy Trinity, Alabama, March 29, 2003Thank you for the invitation to be with you during these special days, particularly here, on what we believe is, and I think we actually experience as .... our sacred ground in Holy Trinity, Alabama.
Coming to this meeting, I am sure that each of us brought very deep concern about our being at war and the consequences of this for our world. We might pause for a moment and ask our Beloved Three-in-One Love God to embrace the war-torn parts of our globe to bring healing and peace.
But here, haven’t we felt the closeness of God! Aren’t we more aware of the presence of all those in our Missionary Cenacle Family who have gone before us. I am confident that they are always interceding on our behalf, that they are interested in us, and right now in a most particular way they have been focused on praying and interceding for all of you during this your 2003 Leadership Assembly.
I think I can hear Dr. Healy saying how pleased she is to see so many leaders of the Missionary Cenacle Apostolate gathered here to plan for the future of the MCA, and therefore, in some very related way for the future of the Missionary Cenacle Family.
I think that Dr. Healy exemplified love and service in her role as General Custodian of the MCA for so many years and through so many transitions. I am struck that you have dedicated this particular Leadership Assembly to her. I believe that we have not begun to realize the great influence Dr. Healy exerted on our Missionary Cenacle Family. I often think of her close relationship to Mother Boniface and Father Judge, and reflect upon this modeling and enfleshing of Trinitarian love. I become more aware that Dr. Healy blazed the trail for the MCA, encouraged and inspired by her friends, Father Judge and Mother Boniface.
As members of the Missionary Cenacle Family, we are so aware that missionary is at the core of who we are and that being missionaries influences our lives profoundly. For me, there are certain words that inspire, inform and challenge our lives, which is why I want to reflect upon Love means Service with you, because I believe that these words are hallmarks for all of us.
I suggest the image we hold before us be that of Jesus washing the feet of his Apostles. Jesus wished to show his Apostles how much he loved them before He left them. He performed a tender service. In responding to the call to leadership, it is essential that we know Jesus through His words and actions.
Love means service, and therefore a very evident mark of a real love for Jesus Christ is to do something for His cause.
I heard these words spoken by Father Judge in one of his conferences that was read (no, I did not personally know Father Judge) at one of our Cenacle meetings when I was a young girl in the MCA. The words stirred in my heart and have stayed with me my entire life. As a teenager, these words were actualized by the Holy Spirit leading and guiding me as my Junior MCA group visited local nursing homes in my hometown, Hyannis; as we taught religious education to some children that lived in a local housing project; as we were very involved in the MCA meetings, Days of Recollection and Retreats, as well as Christ the King and Pentecost Missionary Meetings. Some of us were also on hand year after year to help with the kindergarten graduations and plays that our Sisters had each year. And some of us went to a Summer School of Catholic Action in Philadelphia, PA, that has a modern day counterpart in SUMMER MISSION INSTITUTE.
That you are here witnesses to the fact that you are both aware of being called to leadership for the MCA (and for the Missionary Cenacle Family) and that you are willing to assume this responsibility. We have spent these days with your being concerned with leadership issues. Issues that each of you, as you return home, will be accountable to prayerfully address and to work to bring about.
For me the central matter is love because out of love comes the deepest response to leading. This is service. Love means service. This is lived in different ways at different times of each of our lives.
Love means growing in awareness of what other people’s highest priority needs are and to discover how these needs are being served. Love means service intends that members, associates, each of us and all with whom we come in contact continuously grow, become healthier, wiser, freer, more aware of God’s love and ultimately we each become more holy.
In his Lenten message for this year, our Holy Father said: The efforts of Christians to promote justice, their commitment to the defense of the powerless, their humanitarian work in providing bread for the hungry and care of the sick, and responding to every emergency - all of this strength comes from the inexhaustible love of Jesus Christ who gave himself totally - even unto death - in total obedience to the Father. Calvary eloquently proclaims the message of the Blessed Trinity’s love for human beings of all times and all places.
Father Judge put it this way: The love of God means the love of neighbor. There is no better evidence no truer proof of a great love of God, than a great love of our neighbor. Love of our neighbor is proven in patience and in trial, in the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. A treatment of our neighbor... inconsiderately, harshly, unbrotherly or unsisterly is unchristlike and argues a great want of the love of God. That fraternal love be in the Missionary Cenacle should be our constant prayer. This love of the neighbor should be manifest on all occasions.
In a most particular way leaders are called to enter into the lives of others in quite human and very profound ways. A challenging way for each of us to reflect on how we do love and serve is to remember the corporal and spiritual works of mercy: to feed the hungry; to give drink to the thirsty; to clothe the naked; to visit the imprisoned; to shelter the homeless; to visit the sick; to bury the dead.
And the spiritual works of mercy are: to admonish the sinner; to instruct the ignorant; to counsel the doubtful; to comfort the sorrowful; to bear wrongs patiently; to forgive all injuries; to pray for the living and the dead.
We have so much to think about.
I again place before this Leadership Gathering the image of Jesus as He gathered His apostles together in the Upper Room, where during the course of their time together there, Jesus washed and dried the feet of each of the Apostles.
Jesus knew human beings in all their strength and weakness, and gave an example of service. For us, I think we can meditate on this magnanimous love that was expressed in the great charity of Jesus washing feet. And we can reflect on the challenge Jesus set and consider His words: What I have done, so you must do.
In this group of Apostles were Peter, James, John, Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James the Son of Alphaeus, Simon the Cannanean and of course, Judas who was just about to betray Jesus. There is reason for us to believe that Judas was present at the washing of the feet and that his feet too were washed. I wonder what Jesus thought and felt as He washed and dried Judas feet
And Judas?
And Mary? Was Mary there? Is Mary in your foot washing scene of Jesus?
And each of us? As we think of Jesus washing feet, we become more conscious that Jesus kneels before each of the apostles, surely a role reversal. Jesus, Lord and Master, washes their feet. Is this not the way for us to honor God by giving this kind of respect to one another?
Love means service. As I reflect on this scene, it occurs to me that loving as Jesus did means loving and serving all...and perhaps being served by those we are not so close to or fond of.. Bear with one another.....Forgive as the Lord has forgiven you. Over all these virtues put on love....Christ’s peace must reign in your hearts (Col 3:13-15). We know we have been told to do as Jesus did. Yes, this does mean washing one another’s feet. Jesus did express his love in service to the world and now we must do likewise. Live Jesus!
March, 2003
Sister Barbara DeMoranville, MSBT