Doing The Lord's Work and Doing it HIS Way

Doing The Lord's Work and Doing it HIS Way

Reflection on Luke 10:38-42

By Fr. Maximilian Buonocore, OSB

Rabbi Bloom and Father O'Reilly were arguing one day about which religion – Judaism or Catholicism – helps us more effectively to do God’s work and fulfill his will. They went on for some time and very soon, things began to get out of hand. Finally Rabbi Bloom said, "We must not quarrel in this way. It's not right. We are both doing God's work, you in your way and I in His way." Actually, there is an important message here. Doing God’s work is not automatically in perfect alignment with doing God’s will. It is common to think that if I am doing God’s work, then I am automatically doing God’s will. But this is not always the case. For God’s work and God’s will to line up perfectly, I must be doing God’s work in God’s way. If we are doing God’s work our way, we may indeed accomplish some good end in the service of other people, but we may not be doing God’s will, in the sense of doing it His way. Only when we are doing God’s work in God’s way are we fully being and living the end to which that labor is directed: life in God. In the moment depicted in the Gospel passage today, Martha was doing God’s work her way, anxious and worried about many things which she had determined important and necessary to accomplish, while at the same time overlooking what God himself has deemed important and necessary. Although the aim of her work – serving the bodily needs of those around her, especially the needs of their special guest, Jesus, seemed important to Martha, it was not what Jesus himself deemed important at that moment. Mary, on the other hand, was at that moment not physically laboring, but was preparing herself for a more perfect labor of love – a labor of being, rather than a mere labor of doing – by listening and contemplating the Word of God in and through Jesus. Work is a way of accomplishing some end, which often involves serving the needs of other people. We have as our end meeting other’s bodily needs by serving them at table, assisting them when they are sick, etc. But if this work is not infused with a contemplative spirit, it will not be service in the perfect sense. When we do His work our way, anxiousness and worry are inevitable. When we do His work His way, inner peace will accompany our work because we will have the trust and comfort that the Lord will provide. Labor which is true service is an exterior outpouring of our interior response, a most intimate response, to God’s loving presence and work within us. Christians are called to be servants in imitation of Christ, as the ones through whom he exercises his servanthood in the world. This means that it is by the grace of the Holy Spirit that is in us through faith, that the image and likeness of God is perfected in us as we become more fully imitators of God’s Word, the Son of God, who is supreme in the art of service, and the Supreme Servant who seeks to serve God’s children. He who is supreme in the art of service, serves the needs of his children through each of us, not by our own power, but by the power of his Spirit in us. As St. Paul said, “For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5). This guarantees that when I labor to do God’s will, I am more likely to be doing it in His way rather than in my way.

All for Jesus,

Fr. Max