29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B
First Reading: Is 53:10-11
Second Reading: Heb 4:14-16
Gospel Reading: Mk 10:35-45
“Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all,” Jesus says in this Sunday’s Gospel Reading.
The secular world sees the positions of Pope, bishops, and pastors as positions of power, from which the incumbent “lords it over” those in his charge.
In contrast, one of the Pope’s titles is “servant of the servants of God.”
The late Vancouver Archbishop Adam Exner, OMI, recounted his “servant” experiences at a prayer breakfast in 1995.
First, he planned to be a farmer, with a dance band on the side. Then, as he cut down a tree one day, he began to wonder whether, at the end of his life, he would be able to claim what that tree could claim: that it had fulfilled God’s plan for it.
“I knew that I would never be at peace again until I said, ‘Here I am, Lord—do with me what You will,’” he said.
Finally, he gave in and joined the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, suggesting that he might work on a farm as a lay brother. However, he said, his superiors told him “to go back to school and keep on going as long as the lights were green.”
Back in school, he planned to become a foreign missionary, but he was told to go to Rome to study theology for three years. After ordination he was sent back to Canada, first to work for his doctorate in theology and then to teach at the Oblate seminary in Saskatchewan. After that, he was made rector of a new Oblate seminary in Brazil for six years.
In January 1974, he was called in by Archbishop Joseph MacNeil of Edmonton and asked to become Bishop of Kamloops.
“My blood started running backwards,” he said. “I had never even worked in a chancery office, let alone a parish.” He listed his objections, but Archbishop MacNeil simply asked whether he was ready to obey or not.
As his episcopal motto, he chose, “To serve as he served.”
After eight years in Kamloops, the Canadian apostolic nuncio phoned to say that the Holy Father had appointed him Archbishop of Winnipeg and required an answer immediately.
“My reply was that I had made a vow of obedience, had tried to live it in the past, and would try to do so now,” Bishop Exner said. “The answer was simply ‘Thank you.’ Click.”
Another phone call nine years later brought him to Vancouver. At his installation on Aug. 15, 1991, he said, “I pledge all I am, all I have, all I can do to serve as He served.”
“As I look back over my life, I realize that I have not fulfilled a single one of my own plans,” the archbishop said. “However, I have to admit that I have been happy as a priest, and that the Church has been better served than if I had chosen my own work, because I would never, never have challenged myself as God has done.”
Every priest knows what it is to be asked to leave a parish where he has been happy and secure for another where he knows nobody.
God’s service demands suffering, as the First Reading suggests, but “out of his anguish,” the one who serves “shall see light; he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge.”
Our supreme example is Christ, who suffered for all of us. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet is without sin,” says the Letter to the Hebrews.
Whenever and however God asks us to serve, he gives us the strength to do what he asks. All we have to say is, “Here I am, Lord; I come to do your will.”
Father Hawkswell is again teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English with new insights, in both print and YouTube form, at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. He is also teaching the course in person on Sundays from 2 to 4 p.m. at the John Paul II Pastoral Centre, 4885 Saint John Paul II Way, 33rd Avenue and Willow Street, Vancouver, and Mondays from 10 a.m. to noon in St. Anthony’s Church Hall, 2347 Inglewood Avenue, West Vancouver. The title of the presentation next week is What is the Catholic Church? The course is entirely free of charge and no pre-registration is necessary.
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