SECOND SUNDAY IN LENT, YEAR B

February 25, 2024

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

 

 

Genesis 17:1-7 

Psalm 22:22-23 

Romans 4:13-25 

Mark 8:31-38

 

 

A theme running through today’s readings is that of God’s trustworthiness. Throughout Scripture, God makes multiple promises to his people, including us, and God’s promises are reliable and true. God is worthy of our trust.

 

Both the Old Testament and the Epistle readings describe God’s promises to the Patriarch Abraham. In the reading from Exodus, God makes a covenant with Abraham, promising that he shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations: “I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you.” Lest there be any misunderstanding, moreover, God specifies that this progeny will come through a son born of Abraham’s wife Sarah and no-one else: “I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.”

 

Now, at face value, these promises are literally unbelievable. Abraham is at this time 99 years old; and Sarah, who’s been infertile all her life—in biblical language, “barren”—is well past the childbearing years. Nevertheless, as Saint Paul reminds us in today’s Epistle reading from Romans, Abraham believed God. “Hoping against hope,” Paul writes, “[Abraham] believed he would become the father of many nations … He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead … or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb … [but] being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised … [Abraham’s] faith was reckoned to him as righteousness.” 

 

At a time when people believed that they lived on after death primarily in and through their children, God’s word to Abraham and Sarah was, in effect, the promise of immortality. Their joy in believing may thus be summed up in the words of Psalm 22, which we just recited: “My soul shall live for [the Lord]; my descendants shall serve him; they shall be known as the Lord’s for ever. They shall come and make known to a people yet unborn the saving deeds that he has done.” 

 

In the Gospel reading, however, Peter’s response to Jesus stands in stark contrast to Abraham’s response to God. After Jesus makes what is known as his first passion prediction—foretelling that “the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again”—Peter begins to rebuke him. But Jesus in turn rebukes Peter: “Get behind me Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

 

What’s going on here is that Peter seems to hear and understand the parts about suffering, rejection, and death, but not the part about after three days rising again. Unlike Abraham, Peter lacks the faith to trust that God can literally bring life from death. So, where Abraham’s faith was reckoned to him as righteousness, Peter’s lack of faith earns him the rebuke, “Get behind me, Satan!” Peter will in due course have the opportunity to make up what’s lacking and live up to his vocation as the Rock upon which Christ builds his Church. But, for the moment, he’s not there yet.

 

So, the contrast presents a choice. Will we respond to God’s promises with the belief of Abraham, or with the unbelief of Peter? As Saint Paul says, just as Abraham’s faith was reckoned to him as righteousness, so will our faith “be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead …” 

 

Only by trusting in God’s promises is it possible to respond affirmatively to Our Lord’s call to take up our cross and follow him. God never promises us an easy life in this world. While the way of Christian discipleship brings many moments of deep joy, it can also be at times difficult, discouraging, and painful.

 

Eight years ago, I went on a Church of England pilgrimage to Lourdes, in the southwest of France, where the blessed Virgin Mary appeared 18 times during the year 1858 to a young peasant girl named Bernadette Soubirous. The apparitions sparked a renewal of faith and devotion in France at a time when the Church was under sustained attack by the forces of secularism. Lourdes quickly became a center of international pilgrimage known for its ministries of healing, and today it attracts approximately five million pilgrims per year from all over the world.

 

Now, as Episcopalians, we’re not required to believe in the authenticity of Mary’s appearances to Bernadette. Our Anglican tradition doesn’t require us to believe anything that cannot be proved from Holy Scripture. For that matter, Roman Catholics aren’t required to believe in the Lourdes apparitions either. The Roman Catholic Church simply declares them "worthy of belief," which means that Roman Catholics are free to believe them if they find them persuasive, but they don’t have to believe them if they don’t find them persuasive. So, it’s safe to say that we’re free to take the Lourdes apparitions on their own merits.

For me, the most memorable words of Our Lady of Lourdes to Bernadette were: “I do not promise you happiness in this world, but in the next.” Even if Bernadette was uniquely favored by these wonderful encounters with Mary, and even if she was a chosen instrument for the spiritual renewal of the French Church, as I believe she was, we discover when we read her biography that her life was never easy, either before or after the apparitions. She was born and raised in grinding poverty. The authorities of both Church and state initially treated her story with skepticism and hostility. She was subject for years to stressful questioning and cross-examination by the ecclesiastical commission appointed to investigate her case. Finally, after her local bishop proclaimed her visions worthy of belief, she was sent off to a convent where she was treated harshly by strict superiors and jealous sisters for the rest of her life.

 

Like so many of the Church’s saints, Bernadette’s example teaches us to follow Jesus no matter what, in the confidence that God is trustworthy and his promises are true. God fulfilled his promises to Abraham, and God will fulfill his promises to us. This life brings us many God-given moments of joy and happiness in this world, and that’s good. But God’s ultimate promise to us is the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. So, whatever sufferings, hardships, or humiliations we may have to undergo in this world, Jesus promises final victory and glory to all who persevere in taking up his Cross and following him.

  

FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT

February 17 / 18, 2024

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

 

Genesis 9:8-17 

Psalm 25:1-9

I Peter 3:18-22

Mark 1:9-15

This forty-day season of Lent, which just began on Wednesday, originated in the early Church as a season of preparation for Holy Baptism at Easter. And one of the scriptural stories that the early Church’s bishops and catechists would use to explain the meaning of baptism to the candidates—or catechumens, as they were known—was that of the Great Flood and Noah’s Ark, mentioned repeatedly in today’s readings.

 

The Old Testament reading from Genesis recounts how, after the waters had subsided, God gave the rainbow as the sign of his covenant with all creation, including his promise never again to destroy the earth by water. Then, in the Epistle, Saint Peter writes that Holy Baptism corresponds to this: that is, to the salvation of those in the Ark—Noah and his family—along with all the animals.

 

Just as the original Deluge inundated and drowned a sinful world, making possible a new beginning of creation, so the waters of baptism wash away the stain of Original Sin, making us a new creation in Christ. As Saint Peter puts it: “not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience.”  In other words, our baptism has set us free from our burden of inherited guilt, and thus, like the Great Flood, marks the birth of a whole new world of possibilities.

 

Today’s reading from Saint Mark’s Gospel takes up this theme by describing our Lord’s baptism by John in the River Jordan as the beginning of his public ministry, after an interlude of forty days in the wilderness tempted by the devil. One implication is that because we’ve been baptized according to Christ’s example and command, we’ve also received the grace and strength necessary to resist temptation as he did.

 

Then Jesus comes into his homeland of Galilee, preaching the good news. The implication here is that just as the baptism of Jesus marks the beginning of his public ministry, so our baptism equips us with the spiritual gifts we need to serve God and exercise our ministries as Christians in the world.

But in the Epistle, Saint Peter makes a rather mysterious statement. After Jesus “suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous,” he went and made a proclamation to “the spirits in prison”—whom Peter identifies precisely as those who were drowned in the Great Flood. What is going on here?

 

Christian tradition calls this episode the “Harrowing of Hell.” Specifically, during the three days between his death and resurrection, while his body lay incorrupt in the tomb, Jesus went in spirit to the place of the departed spirits—the spirits of all those who’d ever lived from the world’s creation up until that time—to proclaim to them the good news of the salvation he’d won on the cross, and to set them free from their bondage to sin and death.

 

Some Eastern Orthodox icons depict this wonderful mystery. Having broken down the gates of Hell, Jesus raises Adam and Eve from their tombs, along with the Old Testament patriarchs, prophets, and kings. (Such an icon hangs on the wall of the Rector’s office, which I’ll be happy to show to anyone who’s interested.) The deeper symbolism here is that Christ extends his offer of salvation to all people everywhere, no matter where or when they lived and died, and regardless of whether or not they explicitly knew or accepted him in this life. Everyone remains free, of course, to accept or reject his offer of eternal life. But no-one is ever denied the choice.

 

Then, after his spirit returned to be reunited with his body in the Resurrection, Christ ascended to the right hand of his Father in heaven, as Peter says, “with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him”—just as, according to Mark, “the angels ministered to him” during his forty days in the wilderness.

 

From this dazzling kaleidoscope of scriptural themes and images, the words of our Lord ring out loud and clear: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” We can imagine Jesus saying those same words to us here and now, just as he did when he first came into Galilee, and again when he went and preached to the departed spirits in Hades: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” 

 

Perhaps the message for us is that there’s no time like the present. Whatever we may have been intending to do but have been putting off, whatever we need to do to set things right with God and our neighbor, the time is now! And this Season of Lent affords us a wonderful opportunity to put right anything that we need to put right in our lives.

The good news is that we can do whatever we discern that God is calling us to do, because of the grace of our baptism. As I said at the beginning, this season of Lent originated as a period of preparation for Holy Baptism, culminating in the Renewal of Baptismal Vows, at the Great Vigil of Easter. One way of looking at the purpose of these forty days is as a time of preparing ourselves to reaffirm our faith at that pivotal moment in that wonderful liturgy.

 

Lent is a time to reflect on the gifts we received at our baptism, and to ask God to show us how he wants us to develop and use these gifts in our lives today. As the Psalmist sings: “Gracious and upright is the Lord, therefore he teaches sinners in his way; he guides the humble in doing right, and teaches his way to the lowly.” This Lenten season offers us the opportunity to humble ourselves and turn to Christ in repentance and humility, precisely so that he may teach us his ways and guide us in doing right.

ASH WEDNESDAY

February 14, 2024

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

 

 

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” With these words, we receive the ashes marked on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday, one of the Church Year’s two principal Fasting Days (the other being Good Friday). The ashes serve as outward signs of our repentance and commitment to keeping a good Lent, marked by acts of penitence and self-denial; prayer, fasting, and almsgiving.

 

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” These words hark back to God’s words to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden in the third chapter of Genesis. There, after the serpent successfully tempts Adam and Eve to disobey God, God pronounces three curses: first upon the serpent, then upon the earth, and finally upon the first parents themselves.

 

To Adam in particular, God declares: “Because you have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it’ … cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life … In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground; for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

 

We don’t need to read the Genesis creation story literally to appreciate its profound theological truth. Somehow, something has gone terribly wrong with us and with our world. War in Ukraine, Gaza, and the Middle East; catastrophic weather patterns resulting from human-induced global warming.

 

None of this is God’s fault. God didn’t intend his creation to turn out this way. But human disobedience and rebellion have brought it all about. We’ve been cast out of paradise and have incurred a death sentence: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

 

On Ash Wednesday, the priest has the unenviable duty of re-pronouncing this ancient curse on the faithful who come forward to receive their ashes. The traditional formula is actually, “Remember, O man, that dust thou art, and to dust shalt thou return.” Here, the word “man” really means “human being,” and signifies our common descent from Adam. In the original Hebrew, moreover, the name Adam is derived from Adamah, which means “ground” or “earth,” reminding us that in the beginning, according to the Genesis story, God formed the first man of dust from the ground. 

 

In the biblical understanding, moreover, Adam’s death is not part of some natural biological cycle but rather the direct consequence of his rebellion and fall. The words accompanying the imposition of ashes thus mean not merely, “You’re going to die,” but “You’re going to die because of your sin”—the sin, that is, in which we all share as members of a fallen human race in a fallen world.

 

So, the first point to get clear about our ashen crosses is that they’re markers not only of fasting and repentance, but also of sin and guilt, mortality and death. Now, if that were the end of the story, we could only despair. It’s not the end of the story, of course, but our primary need is to recognize the truth of our situation so that we may become receptive God’s forgiveness, grace, and healing. And that really is the point of today’s liturgy: to accept in all humility the truth of who we are apart from God. The word “humility” derives from the Latin humus, earth. We’re from the earth, condemned to return to the dust from whence we came.

 

These first words of our Lenten journey are, however, by no means the last. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul writes explicitly of the contrast between the first Adam and Christ, the second Adam: “The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.” It’s a remarkable passage: “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.” 

In a few minutes, we shall receive a cross of ash on our foreheads. But at our baptism we received another cross on our foreheads, not of ashes but of the oil of chrism, and the words then spoken were: “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.” So, where the Lenten cross of ashes signifies our membership in Adam, the man of dust, the cross of chrism signifies our membership in Christ, the man from heaven.

 

These two signings of the cross point to our two identities: who we are in Adam, and who we are in Christ. On one hand: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” On the other hand: “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.” Our baptism carries the promise that even after we go the way of all flesh and return to the dust after the pattern of Adam, resurrection glory and eternal life still await us after the pattern of Christ.

 

Today, then, we acknowledge our old identity in Adam, the man of dust. In forty days’ time we shall conclude this season of Lent at the Great Vigil of Easter by renewing our baptismal vows in celebration of the Lord’s Resurrection. In between, the Church invites us to undertake a journey of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving in order to reclaim and live into our new identity in Christ, the man from heaven. God has granted us the desire to be here at the starting point; pray that he will likewise grant us grace to continue and finish the journey that we begin today.

LAST SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY

February 10 / 11, 2024

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

 

 

II Kings 2:1-12; Psalm 50:1-6; II Cor. 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-9

 

 

The Church’s celebration of this Last Sunday after the Epiphany calls our attention to the revelation of God’s glory – the glory of the Lord. Throughout the Sacred Scriptures, the images of flame, fire, or bright shining light—sometimes combined with dark clouds or even wind and storm—furnish the visible signs of God’s immediate presence. (Think of the clouds of thick darkness and flashes of fire that enshroud Mount Sinai when God gives the Law to Moses. Or of the tongues of fire and sound of rushing wind that fill the Upper Room on the Day of Pentecost.)

 

As the Psalmist puts it: “Out of Zion, perfect in its beauty, God reveals himself in glory. Our God will come and will not keep silence; before him there is a consuming flame, and round about him a raging storm.” Again, at the end of his earthly life, the prophet Elijah is taken up into heaven in a whirlwind by horses of fire and chariots of fire: another visible manifestation of the divine glory.

 

So when Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a high mountain apart, and is transfigured before them with resplendent light, the meaning is unmistakably clear. They behold what Saint Paul describes in today’s Epistle as “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” It’s more than a coincidence that the two Old Testament figures who appear, Moses and Elijah, each had their own encounters with God upon mountaintops: Moses on Mount Sinai receiving the Law; and Elijah, on Mount Horeb fleeing for his life. (And I’ll have a bit more to say about that in a minute.)

 

This wonderful revelation takes place six days after Peter has confessed that Jesus is the Messiah, and Jesus has in turn foretold his own forthcoming suffering and death in Jerusalem. But having thus predicted his passion and cross, here on the mountaintop Jesus gives the three disciples a preview of the glory that awaits him after he’s risen from the dead—and by extension the glory that’s offered to us all when he raises us from the dead. No wonder that Peter says, “Master, it is well that we are here.” 

 

Some commentators suggest that Peter’s offer to make three booths, one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah, represents a misguided attempt to prolong the experience or even to make it permanent. But alas, no, it’s only an anticipation, a foretaste, of the glory that’s yet to come. Before we can get to the Resurrection, it’s necessary to come down off the mountain and continue the journey.

At the beginning of this Eucharist, we prayed the Collect of the Day, which asks God to grant that beholding by faith the light of Christ’s countenance, we may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory.

 

In this life, of course, we “behold the light of his countenance” mostly by faith and not by sight. But I suspect that at one time or another, we’ve all caught glimpses of the glory of the Lord in one form or another—else we wouldn’t be here at this service. Today’s celebration thus affords us the opportunity to call to mind those moments of epiphany and transfiguration that we’ve probably all experienced at one time or another in our own lives. Sometimes it helps to remember those moments and draw from them strength, comfort, and courage.

 

And the voice from the cloud in today’s Gospel, the voice of the Father himself, tells us what we else need to do to receive the strength to bear our cross and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory: “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to Him.” And that raises the question of where we can hear him speak to us today.

 

Jesus, the divine Word, continues to address us in multiple ways. First: in the Sacred Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. (And incidentally, the appearance of Moses and Elijah with Jesus on the mountain signifies, among other things, the witness of the Old Testament Law and Prophets.) We hear Jesus speaking to us in the Church’s liturgy and sacraments.  We can hear him also in the prophetic voices that God raises up from time to time in the Church and in the world in our own day. (Although we do need to exercise a bit of discernment about how much of what those voices are saying really is from God.) 

 

And sometimes, just sometimes, he speaks to us as he spoke to the Prophet Elijah. You remember the story: after a forty days’ journey into the wilderness, fleeing from his enemies, Elijah arrives at Mount Horeb and hides himself in a cave. There then comes earthquake, wind, and fire; but God is not in the earthquake, wind, and fire. But in the calm following the storm, God speaks to Elijah in a still, small voice, reassuring him and telling him what to do next. So it can happen, at times of God’s choosing and not our own, that we also hear that same still small voice speaking in the depths of our hearts in moments of silence and solitude.

As this parish of Saint Mark the Evangelist continues in the coming months with all the steps and procedures associated with the search for a new Rector, these words spoken from the cloud on the Mount of Transfiguration merit and will reward frequent recollection and meditation: “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to Him.” 

 

What I mean is that during the Search Process we will hear many voices saying many things. Some of those voices will indeed be our own! And while all such voices need to be heard, listened to, and respectfully considered, it’s of paramount importance to keep our ears open for the voice of Christ, as he leads us and guides us in the directions in which he wants us to go.

 

“This is my Beloved Son; listen to Him.” If we do that, not only in the Search for a new Rector but in all the rest of our lives, then we have the assurance that beholding by faith the light of Christ’s countenance, we shall be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory.

 

 

 

FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY, YEAR B

Sunday 4 February 2024

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Warwick, R. I.

 

Mark 1:29-39

 

The Gospel readings for these past three Sundays have been taken from the first chapter of Saint Mark, where Our Lord’s public ministry of teaching and healing is just getting under way. And the healing of Simon Peter’s mother-in-law in today’s Gospel presents some interesting problems.

 

One commentator writes: this story “would seem to be simply another example of hopelessly chauvinistic religion. Jesus enters the home of Simon Peter, heals Peter’s mother-in-law, then as the boys settle in around the TV for some beer and Monday night football, Peter’s mother-in-law prepares and serves them a meal.”

 

Applying contemporary standards to this situation, we might expect Our Lord and his disciples to leave the poor woman alone to rest. Or better still, they might do the cooking themselves and serve her. After all, she’s just gotten over a fever; and fevers in those days often signaled a life-threatening condition. And we certainly wouldn’t want to entertain the possibility that Jesus healed Simon’s mother-in-law of the fever precisely to make her available to cook dinner and wait on them.

 

However, the ancients didn’t think about sickness and healing in the same way that we do. The distinction between disease and illness may be helpful here. Strictly speaking, a disease is a biomedical condition that may or may not be susceptible to a physical cure. But illness has a wider meaning that often involves the isolation and dislocation from one’s place in the community that often accompanies disease.

 

The corresponding distinction is that between cure and healing. By itself, a cure is the removal of a physical disease or impairment, resulting in the restoration of physical health. But healing, in the fullest sense of the word, means something more. It involves the recovery of wholeness and well-being, including restoration to the community life from which one’s been separated by one’s illness.

 

So, according to this distinction, the sign of Peter’s mother-in-law’s cure is the fever leaving her, but the sign of her healing is her restoration to her place and role in the household. And the word spreads like wildfire. Having heard that Peter’s mother-in-law is back on her feet, the whole town comes crowding around the door at sunset, bringing their sick, lame, and possessed for similar healing.

 

Notice, also, that Jesus is the one who has taken the initiative to be of service to Peter’s mother-in-law first. So, it’s arguable that in attending to Jesus and the disciples, she’s reciprocating the service that he’s already rendered her. On balance, our Lord and the disciples do the lion’s share of the work in today’s Gospel, ministering to the great crowd that gathers round the door of the house at sundown.

 

To go a bit deeper, the Greek verb used to describe the service of Peter’s mother-in-law to the disciples—diakoneo—is the same verb from which we derive the English words “deacon” and “minister.” It’s the same verb that Mark uses in the account of the temptations in the wilderness when he says that angels came and “ministered” to Jesus. And it’s the same verb that Jesus uses about himself when he says that he came “not to be served but to serve” and give his life as a ransom for many.

 

Initially, the disciples just don’t get it. James and John, who appear in today’s Gospel, later ask Our Lord to grant them to sit one at his right hand and one at his left when he enters into his kingdom. In response, he teaches them that whoever would be greatest in the kingdom must be the servant of all. The disciples may not get it, but in today’s Gospel Peter’s mother-in-law is the one who does get it.

 

Canadian theologian Douglas John Hall writes that for many if not most people today, the greatest fear of all is not the fear of death but the fear of becoming superfluous or redundant. Our greatest anxiety is the prospect of being unable to fulfill a defined social role in which we make some sort of valued contribution to the community. For, deep down, one of our greatest needs is to feel that in some small way our lives really do make a positive difference and that we’re of some use to someone.

 

If Jesus makes a difference in our lives, it’s not only because he saves us from our sins and leads us on the path to eternal life - which indeed he does - but also because in the meantime he gives us work to do, whereby we can be of service to God and our neighbor. A key part of the Church’s vocation is to be a community where no-one ever need feel that they’re of no use or that there’s nothing for them to do. Even someone confined to a wheelchair in a nursing home has an indispensable role to play in the life of the Body of Christ, even by so simple an activity as praying for the rest of us. No-one is redundant; no-one is superfluous. 

 

In many parishes, however, it often feels as though twenty percent of the people do eighty percent of the work. And that presents a real danger of burnout. The real challenge for the parish community as a whole is to find ways of spreading the workload more evenly and to inspire everyone to help with something. Many hands make light work.

 

At the same time, we need to beware of the temptation to want to participate on nobody’s terms but our own. On several occasions in my past parishes, I’ve had to tell certain aggressive and pushy parishioners that they simply weren’t ready for the leadership responsibilities for which they were putting themselves forward, so they needed to back down and back off. 

 

In my own participation in the Church’s life, the most enjoyable and rewarding assignments were never those that I sought out, but rather those that sought me out. Incidentally, that’s how I came here to be your Interim Priest. I didn’t seek this position out. Rather, Canon Dena at the diocesan office reached out to me, and told me that this parish of Saint Mark in its interim period was a place where my gifts and experience might be useful, and asked if I would consider coming here. And I’m really glad that she did. But so often that’s how God’s kingdom works. We find the greatest joy not in deciding where we want to go and striving to get there, but rather in answering the call to go and be of service in places where we never even knew there was a need. 

 

In any case, in every parish community, there’s plenty for everyone to do. No-one is redundant; no-one is superfluous. We all have our own unique contribution to make. We all have plenty of opportunities to be of service, following the example of him who came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.