Trong đoạn cuối bài Tin Mừng hôm nay, chúng ta nghe Chúa nói "Chúng ta là những đầy tớ vô dụng. "Những lời này của Chúa Giêsu có thể như khinh thường và chỉ trích chúng ta một cách khá tiêu cực và rõ ràng là trái ngược với những điều khác mà Ngài đã dạy chúng ta. Như mọi khi, chúng ta được hiểu khá rõ ràng là khi nhận được những chỉ trích tiêu cực thì đó sẽ là những thách thức để chúng ta suy nghĩ sâu sắc hơn, cũng như giáo huấn và những việc làm sáng tỏ một cách tích cực cũng có rất nhiều thách thức lớn hơn. Chúng ta có thể diễn giải lời của Chúa Giêsu: Không nên quá ỷ y vào những ân sủng của Thiên Chúa ban cho mỗi người chúng ta. Như Thánh Phaolô đã [1 Cor 4: 7] nhắc nhở chúng ta biết rằng không có bất cứ điều gì mà Thiên Chúa đã không ban cho chúng ta được: tất cả là hồng ân và là những món quà tặng của Thiên Chúa. Vì vậy chúng ta là người phải biết ơn Thiên Chúa, chứ không phải Thiên Chúa nên biết ơn cho chúng ta.
Ở trong mức độ sâu sắc hơn và có lẽ một chút huyền bí, chúng ta nên vui mừng là chúng ta thực sự "vô dụng" trước mặt Thiên Chúa. "Sự hữu dụng” của chúng ta chắc chắn không phải là một hạng mục để giúp chúng ta thấu hiểu được mầu nhiệm sáng tạo của Thiên Chúa. Thiên Chúa dựng nên mặt trời, không khí, nước và những thứ khác trong thiên nhiên để chúng ta sử dụng, nhưng Ngài đã không tạo dựng con người chúng ta để được "sử dụng": Sự kỳ diệu lạ thường và sự cứu rỗi con người nhân loại chúng ta chứng to cho chúng ta biết là Thiên Chúa tạo dựng ra con người chúng ta vì tình yêu, với tình yêu và đơn thuần là chỉ vì tình yêu.
Lạy Chúa xin ban cho chúng con ân sủng để biết cảm ơn Chúa và ngợi khen Chúa vì những sự kỳ diệu mà Chúa đã thực hiện nơi con người chúng con.... Xin cho chúng con biết khiêm tốn để nhận biết mình chỉ là phận hèn tôi tớ của Chúa và giúp chúng con hiểu được những gì Chúa muốn nơi chúng con.
We are useless servants.” These words of Jesus may strike us as rather negative and distinctly at odds with much else that He taught us. As always, we best understand such negative statements as challenges to deeper thinking, just as his positive and enlightening teaching also contains many great challenges. We may paraphrase Jesus’ words as: Do not take grace for granted. Paul [1Cor 4:7] reminds us that we do not have anything which has not been given us: all is grace and gift. Therefore it is we who must be grateful to God, not God who should be grateful to us. Preface IV for our ordinary weekday Eucharistic Prayer teaches us: “You have no need of our praise, yet our desire to thank you is itself your gift.
On a much deeper and perhaps somewhat mystical level, we should rejoice that we are indeed “useless” to God. “Use” is not a category to help us understand the mystery of creation. God created the sun, the air, water and the other things of nature for our use, but he did not create us for “use”: the incredible and liberating wonder of our being is that God created us out of love and simply for love.
Lord, grant us the grace to thank You and praise You for the wonder of our being.
Jesus said to the Apostles: “Who among you would say to your servant who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here immediately and take your place at table?’ Would he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare something for me to eat. Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink. You may eat and drink when I am finished?’ Is he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded?” Luke 17:7–9
In most cultures today, the idea of having a servant whom you command to wait on you is far from ideal. Jesus uses this image because the people to whom He was speaking would have easily related. He used it as a way of humbling them because when the illustration is properly understood, He was identifying each one of them as the servant, not the master. Only God is the Master.
When it comes to our service of God, there is no limit to the commands that God will give. At first, that might seem harsh, but it’s not because the commands that God gives to us are dictates of perfect love. We need His commands. We need the order He provides. We need to enter into perfect obedience to Him. We need to listen to everything He tells us and obey it to perfection. Seeing God as our Master and ourselves as His servants will only appear harsh when we fail to understand what sort of Master He is.
Recall the beautiful words of our Blessed Mother when she was given the command from the Archangel Gabriel. The angel said to her, “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus.” This was not a question posed to her; it was a command of love. Mary did not hesitate and did not refuse. She said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.”
At the conclusion of today’s Gospel, Jesus went on to say, “When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.’” In many ways, this is exactly what our Blessed Mother did. She was a servant of God’s perfect commands, and she knew that her love for God obliged her to follow His will.
When you think about your service of the will of God, do you see it as you doing God a favor? Do you see obedience to God’s dictates as an act of generosity on your part and your cooperation with those dictates as above and beyond your natural duties? Hopefully not. Hopefully you understand that you, like our Blessed Mother, are a servant of the one true Master of all. Hopefully you also see the commands of God as the roadmap toward a life of complete fulfillment. When we understand Who the Master is, we will never hesitate in being a servant, or even a slave. We will not hesitate in freely surrendering ourselves over to His will in complete and unwavering obedience. God alone knows what is best for us, and we need to give Him complete control over our lives.
Reflect, today, upon the image of a master and a slave. As you do, try to shed every preconceived image you have that includes harshness, cruelty, dominance and control. Instead, try to see the image of a divine Master Whose only concern is for the servant. Try to see a Master Who perfectly loves the servant. Reflect upon your own need for such a Master in your life. Pray that you will be able to surrender complete control over to God in all things so that He can direct your life into the glorious things He has in store for you.
My Lord and Master, You have commanded me and all Your servants to obey Your commands of perfect love. Your will alone is what is best for our lives and Your dictates bring fulfillment and purpose to our lives. May I, with Your Blessed Mother, always obey You in everything, for I am a servant of You, dear Lord. May I joyfully do what I am obliged to do. Jesus, I trust in You.
Opening Prayer: Lord God, I am your servant. I am in awe of your Son’s humility. He served and gave himself fully without reserve. He is my model. I am your child and will, with the gift of your grace, imitate your Son to the best of my ability.
1. Masters or Servants? In the Gospel, Jesus invites his Apostles to ponder their role as leaders in the Church: Should they act as masters or as servants? At the beginning of the parable, Jesus invites his Apostles to contemplate how they, if they were masters, would treat their servants. If their servant just came in from plowing their fields or tending their sheep, would they, as a master, expect their servants to sit down and eat a good meal or to continue working and wait on them? Naturally, if they were a master, they would expect continued service from their servants. At the end of the parable, however, Jesus turns the tables and invites his Apostles to identify themselves not with a master but with the servants. Just as a servant should not expect their master to be exuberant and grateful when they have only done what they have been commanded to do, so also the Apostles should be humble in their service to their God and Lord. Jesus is the servant par excellence. He is the Lord who stoops down, casts off his garment, and washes the feet of his servants to cleanse them from their sin.
3. The Foundation of our Moral Life: In his Letter to Titus, Paul gives all sorts of exhortations to virtuous and moral living. He exhorts Titus, as a pastor of the Church, to be a teacher of moral conduct in accord with sound doctrine. Mature men in the community need to be respectable and sound in their faith. “Elder women should likewise be respectable in life and conversation and train the younger women, lest God’s word be blasphemed because of Christians’ behavior” (Prothro, The Apostle Paul and His Letters, 251). Young men need to be prudent. Paul asks that all the members of the Church – young and old, male and female – imitate “Christ, who was crucified by the imperial engine of violence.” This imitation, then, “is not one of open rebellion but one of subversive suffering and enduring patience in evangelization by word and deed” (Prothro, The Apostle Paul and His Letters, 254).
The first reading tells us concretely how to behave as Christians. St. Paul tells us as believers to teach sound doctrine, to be temperate and self-controlled, to be prudent in speech, to love and take care of our families, not to be drunkards or slanderers, and to be pure and chaste. Christianity is not just a set of beliefs; it is also meant to be practiced in our daily lives.
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