Parish Missions

The Skill of Active Dependency

One day a beggar made the rounds of a village but got

nothing. Weary and dejected, he sat down by the side of

the road. At his side lay a sack which contained a handful

of wheat. In the evening he would grind it down and bake a

last cake of bread.

Suddenly, he saw the queen’s carriage approaching.

“The queen is kind. She will surely give me something,” said

the beggar to himself as he jumped to his feet. To his delight

the royal carriage came to a halt directly opposite the spot

where he stood with an outstretched hand.

Down came the window of the carriage, and the queen

appeared. The beggar was about to say, “Your Majesty,

could you spare a little money for your unworthy servant.”

But the queen got in the first words. Reaching out an empty

hand, she said, “Friend, could you spare a little something

for your queen?”

Completely taken aback, the beggar said, “Certainly,

your Majesty.” With that he opened the sack, picked out the

smallest grain he could find, and gave it to the queen. The

queen thanked him, and the carriage moved off.

On arriving home that evening, the beggar emptied the

last of his wheat into a pan. As he inspected the miserable

little heap of grains that resulted, he made a starling discovery.

The smallest grain had turned into a grain of pure gold. Then

he bitterly regretted that he had been so miserly with the queen.

--Source Unknown

The paradox of this story is the same paradox of the Gospel: those called to discipleship are to become weak and vulnerable in the presence of the weak and vulnerable.

This is no easy mandate. The world holds that those who help the poor, the oppressed and the marginalized do so out of being a privileged class. The queen seized the opportunity to relinquish power and become vulnerable herself in order to bring the beggar to an awareness of his own giftedness. The beggar unfortunately fails to see his weakness as a calling and regrets not having the same vision as the Princess.

Henri Nouwan put it this way:

"The great paradox of ministry or discipleship is that we minister

above all with our weakness, a weakness that invites us to receive

from those to whom we go....The true skill of discipleship is to help

fearful and often oppressed people become aware of their own gifts....

In that sense ministry becomes the skill of active dependency....

True servants depend on those whom they serve." *

“The Monk and the Cripple: Toward a Spirituality of Ministry,”

America (March. 1980)

That's the image of Jesus in today's Scriptures: the Suffering Servant in Isaiah and the Son of God in the Letter to Hebrews enters our very weakness in order to raise us up.

Today is the feast of St. Luke, a day when many of our faith communities minister to the sick and infirm through the celebration of the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. For us to celebrate this Sacrament in the light of today's Scriptures is to put ourselves at the disposal of the sick and infirm and to see in them our salvation, our healing.

By acknowledging our weakness, we triumph over it and become for the sick the healing presence of the Risen Christ, whose total acceptance on the cross of our human condition brought us salvation. At the same time, today's Scriptures invite the sick to be a sacrament to us of the suffering Christ. In them we see all our frailty and weakness being accepted with unconditional love.

All this goes to the heart of what we Catholic Christians call sacrament. The Anointing of the Sick is more than just an anointing -- it is a call to enter the dying and rising of Christ, to be a sacrament of both the wounded and the healer.

In the Sacrament of the Eucharist we celebrate each Sunday, we enter into that same mystery -- coming in all our frailty and weakness not out of power and prestige -- to be healed and nourished. In so doing we bring that same healing to one another. We become more fully the Body of Christ in the world. And precisely because we all enter into the radical dependency on God's unconditional love, we become more fully community.

What the Scriptures call us to today is servanthood, the servanthood modeled by Jesus, the one who was all and gave all in total dependence so that we might have all. The Good News today calls us to that same self-giving service, the service that the queen offered the beggar: becoming weak so that he might see his own giftedness in his very weakness.

“…whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant;

whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.