Thy Kingdom Come 2

Don't pray that God will bless your ministry;

Pray that you will be allowed a part in the ministry of Jesus

(Father Thomas Joseph; homily of Jan. 11).

I have been thinking about those words ever since I heard them yesterday.  Jesus' ministry on earth was one of rescuing the poor, uplifting the downcast, healing the sick, bringing back the outcast, feeding the hungry---both physically and spiritually--, taking onto Himself the burdens of the discouraged, teaching and breathing meaning and inspiration into the Scriptures, and revealing the face of God to those who sought Him.

Surely God did not send His salvation and outstretched hand only to those who lived in the first century A.D.  Surely, He intended the physical and spiritual ministry of Jesus to continue throughout all generations.  Those we call "saints" and those unknown saints have continued the Divine Ministry by allowing Jesus to dwell in them and to continue in them His mission on earth---to heal, to teach, to reveal, to feed, to encourage, to lift up, to say to those who have lost hope:  Take courage; the kingdom of God is here.  God dwells with you.

I remember going to confession in Medjugore to a wonderful priest named "Peter."  He said to me:  What we do for God is very interesting---but what God does for us----that's the whole story.

Our "ministry" is simply to get out of the way and to allow God to continue His Ministry through us--through our interests, our (quirky) personalities, our talents.  We are poor and inconsistent instruments, but a Master painter, chef, physician, teacher, etc. can use whatever tools are at His disposal to accomplish His purposes.  When the earthquake hit Haiti, I was amazed at the news footage of doctors "operating" in hospitals with the most primitive of tools, working to save lives with whatever they could find at hand. 

This was to me a lesson:  God will use the most primitive and unsophisticated tool at hand to accomplish His work on earth.  If we are available to Him, we will constantly be surprised at how He will use us.  We don't need any special abilities or knowledge---often these will get in the way, as we will learn to put our faith in what we "can do," or in what we "know," instead of trusting completely in what God knows or in what He can do through us. 

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.  To be poor in spirit is to know that we ourselves have no "ministry" at all---but to know that Jesus continues His mission on earth through the poorest and most unlikely of persons.  Jesus Himself claimed that His own work was not His, but the Father's:  The words I say to you are not just my own.  Rather, it is the Father, living in Me, who is doing his work.

When we say, "Thy kingdom come," we are praying that God will continue His work through us, however, and whenever, and to whomever, He chooses to do it.