Letter #6 - A Call to Serve

Dear Abba,

Recently, I had such a strong desire to serve the living Christ. To render unto Him whatever talents He has bestowed upon me, and to have Him multiply my work.

It was a period where I kept hearing about service, about the wonders it does for the soul. About how my sister’s spiritual life seemed to be collapsing, but then she went and served in Kenya. And in Kenya, Christ completely laid Himself in all His glory before every servant: in the service of the streets, in the orphans, in the praises that were sung on top of mountains – and in a place and in a service where Christ was so evidently present, my sister found the strength to continue in spiritual struggle. She found the resurrection in the Resurrected.

Then my brother, who went and served with some men at the monastery for a few short nights. But in those nights, he saw holiness first hand in the monastics and in their demeanor; and in his service and obedience to the monks, he found Christ, the Light, radiating through Him.

Then there were stories more grand. Those who live a life full of service, who the saints appear to. Those who don’t ask, “where can I serve?” but whom the Lord directly tells through His saints, “go serve in this country” and “find this person” and “do this action”. And the stories are recounted over and over and over – so that you begin to ask, “when will You direct me?”

And so, perhaps three months ago now, I found the church emptying at the end of midnight praises. I had been contemplating where the Lord wanted me to serve; or I thought that was my contemplation. But, in honesty, my desire was actually to determine in what great way could I serve the Lord. The emphasis was not on the service of Him, but on what I could do. The same thought, with varying emphases, will be distorted in one regard and pure in another.

“HOW CAN I, with MY talents, serve the Lord?” as opposed to “How can I, with the gifts HE bestows, SERVE THE LORD”. A difference in emphasis shifts the focal point. My focal point was myself, not Him.

So, as the church emptied following midnight praises, I made my way to the rear of the nave of the church, where on an isolated pillar, rested the relics of Pope Kyrillos VI. I kissed him, I looked at the icon that rested above his relics and began my battle: “Baba, you know I love you, and I want to serve Christ. Why am I not called to serve like the others? I want to serve! I would offer myself whole heartedly. How come others are called and not me? Please, I want to be used in the service.” A loud, high pitched noise filled the room and interrupted my plea.

I looked towards the Sanctuary from where the noise was coming. In an almost completely empty church, I saw two young deacons moving chairs, an adult deacon preparing the church for the Sunday Liturgy, and in the middle of all, the elderly hegumen held a firm grip on a little old vacuum, and he vacuumed. He didn’t just vacuum, he vacuumed with care in front of the Sanctuary. He lifted up chairs to get underneath them, he vacuumed to the north, to the south, in front of him – he offered this service of cleaning to the Lord with his whole heart.

And I stood for a moment, and watched in silence. As if directly, the Lord had wanted to tell me how foolish my thoughts of service were. Surely, if service were just some grand action undertaken when you received explicit instruction, no one in the city would have been more worthy than this hegumen; but the Lord was showing me that’s not what service is. For this hegumen, it wasn’t something to be done, but a way in which everything he did was an offering of service to the Lord. He probably could have directed any of the three deacons to vacuum, and they probably would have. The hegumen would have been justified leaving early, having to be the first at the church the following day, but he was one of the latest there. Perhaps the latest, because when I left a short while after, he was still vacuuming. He did not need to be directed to serve, he served because he loved Christ. For him, the love for Christ was in the vacuuming, just as it is in the service of the orphans, as it is in the service of the sick. Not because one service is greater than the other, but because he who loves will seek service in the mundane as much as the grand. And when the mundane is done with as much love and vigor as the grand, the mundane itself becomes a grand offering. An acceptable offering. An offering filled with so much beauty.

That mundane task offered with love, may become much more grand than one realizes. Because when that hegumen offered his service of vacuuming to the Lord, he thought he was cleaning the church; but the Lord used his vacuuming to open my eyes. He offered cleaning, the Lord used it to purify my thoughts.

Can service be an action? I’m sure it can. But better yet, may my actions be done in service of the Lord.

May Christ purify me.

Pray for me Abba,

Your weak son