29th Sunday in Ordinary Time
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/102024.cfm
Jesus gives us a challenging instruction today: “whoever wishes to be great among you will … be the slave of all.” We might understandably be repulsed by Jesus’ language of slavery. Who would want to be a slave? We have a horrifying legacy of enslavement in the United States, a legacy that extends to the Caribbean and Central and South America.
Slavery has never been a positive force in the world, including in the Greco-Roman culture where Jesus lived. So, it is a shock to Jesus’ listeners then and to us to today when he calls himself a slave and tells them he will be a human sacrifice.
By calling himself a slave, Jesus is not saying that he doesn’t have dignity and value, as he is a human being created in the image of God. Nor that his labor and his body can be used up and thrown away by others. Rather he is attacking the human desire to use other people in this way. So-called “great ones” use their power diminish, degrade, and enslave others. He is subverting the concept of “greatness” altogether, aligning himself with the lowest, the most despised, the least powerful. He is putting the last first.
In the 2010s, I took a group of Bellarmine students on three study abroad trips to Peru. While in the capital, Lima, we learned about St. Martin de Porres while visiting his museum and the basilica where he is buried.
Martin was a 16th century mixed-race man. He had a Black or indigenous mother and a white, Spanish father who abandoned him. Martin grew up in poverty in Lima, but he was free, not enslaved like so many other Blacks in the Americas. At age twelve to receive medical training as a barber and surgeon. He aspired to religious life as a Dominican. According to Peruvian law, however, people with African ancestry were barred from becoming priests and nuns.
Undeterred, Martin petitioned to become a lay volunteer with Dominicans. He was accepted and, in his role, he did the most menial labor of the priory, working in the kitchen, the laundry, and infirmary. He experienced racism from some of the white Dominican priests who called him a “mullatto dog” and mocked him for his illegitimacy and his descent from slaves. They used their authority and their priesthood to lord over him.
Martin, however, lived a life of great charity, prayer and humility. He called himself a “poor slave,” even trying to get the priority to sell him into slavery when the Dominicans fell into financial hardship. Martin took the despised name of slave and turned it into a badge of honor. He showed
His obvious holiness led the Dominicans to make him a religious brother, despite his desire to remain in the lowest position.
Martin was renowned for his care to the sick. His persistence and dedication resulted in the healing of many patients who were thought incurable. In one case, he cared for a naked beggar who was covered with ulcers, carrying him into his own bed.
He was a vegetarian who extended his charity to animals, taking in stray cats and dogs and sparing the mice and rats who raided the priory’s kitchens.
Martin’s life shows what it means to be great in the Kingdom of God: as one who came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.
What might it mean for a Bellarmine student to follow in the examples of St. Martin and Jesus? I would ask you to consider giving a year or more of your life after graduation in service to others.
You might consider joining AmeriCorps or Peace Corps and serving with a charity or service organization. I was a Peace Corps Volunteer for 27 months in Bangladesh after I graduated from Bellarmine. You have several faculty members like Dr. Speliotis, Dr. Stone Porter, and Dr. Hutchins, who also served.
God may be calling you to discern a religious vocation as a priest, sister, deacon or brother. I should mention that marrying and becoming a parent is also a religious vocation of service, one that is lived out in a tangible way daily.
There are ways that you can use your education to serve others, as well, whether it is teaching, mentoring, acting as a social worker, doing pro bono legal work, offering free medical clinics or so many other services and vocations.
I would ask you, too, to not consider yourself above doing menial work like that of St. Martin de Porres. Volunteer at a soup kitchen. Visit the elderly at nursing homes like Nazareth next door. Work with those with developmental disabilities. These are all ways that we love each other. Dorothy Day famously said, “everybody wants to change the world, but nobody wants to do the dishes.” Sometimes our most important acts of service are small, thankless deeds done regularly and without recognition. It is through such work that the Kingdom of God is brought about and the last become first. God bless you.
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