Today I have come to have a home among you, and this means a great deal to me. It means that my service with you has taken on another form, and has turned into a commitment and a common life with you. In return, this change places us all before the responsibility of service in the Church. What does service mean? And how do we serve together?
Service in the Church — and here I do not mean the Church as a building, for the easiest of concerns is to care for a deaf, mute stone — the Church is the community of the faithful gathered around the holy chalice. That is, you who hear me, you are the Church, and service means how we serve this community and its needs. Service, then, is that we work together to meet one another’s needs, and to build a strong community, fruitful and productive, that raises generations upon the love of Christ, and raises new generations who think according to the mind of Christ, who walk by the Gospel, who carry the cause of Christ in this wretched world, and that we raise ourselves upon making the Gospel the flow of our life, transforming Christian conduct into a living conduct in Edmonton. And that our community and our church be a community that embraces everyone, attracting new people to it — people who, if they enter among us, we make feel that they have arrived at a bosom that cares for them, feeling a joy that impels them to return to us, seeing that we rejoice in their joy and grieve at their pains.
Some see that service is limited to the priest alone, as the servant of the entire parish, or that it is confined to the parish council together with the priest. And although the great organizational role falls upon the council, and the priest represents an essential axis in this service, the letter of the Apostle Paul rearranges the roles and concepts completely, and even mixes everything up, and erases all our previous ideas about service and about working and living together, and makes us rearrange our roles together
For example, «if a guest entered our church today, who would receive him?» In our new home here, the responsibility is not the responsibility of the “shepherd” alone, but the responsibility of every person who gathers under this roof. The Church is not a hotel that we come to in order to take a service and leave; rather, it is our home and our family. Therefore, do not wait for the priest alone to take the initiative in welcoming or asking; rather, be yourselves the ones who take the initiative. For the true warmth of the Church is measured by the smile of its sons and daughters toward every new face that enters through the door. Whenever you see a new person, say to him: come and see, Jesus is among us.
Some see that the priest alone must attract people, and this is required without doubt; but if people are attracted to the Church for the sake of the person of the priest, they will leave with his departure. But if the priest attracts them to the Church, then your role comes, to embrace them and welcome them, so that they love their presence among you. People do not love this building because it is the house of God; this building is the house of the community, where we meet and gather and rejoice together. Therefore people come here to pray and remain here because of you. There is no doubt that the priest must work, but you too must work to complete the work; for I cannot only invite people, but you must embrace everyone.
Our church in Edmonton lives in a society whose circumstances may be harsh or cold at times, and here comes our evangelical role: our role of turning the commandment into action, so that it becomes a tangible life and love:
How can those who preceded us in this country extend a helping hand to the new families, in their paperwork, or their housing, or their settling in? Is this not what the Lord said: ‘I was a stranger and you took Me in’?
And we ask: how can we support our families and our youth? Through creating spaces for meeting, support groups, and activities that embrace our children and our youth, protect them from loneliness, and keep their hearts attached to their church and their identity.
The Apostle Paul always reminds us that the Church is “the body of Christ,” and the eye cannot say to the hand: I have no need of you. We must learn how to encourage one another and rejoice in one another’s successes. The success of the Church is never measured by the success of the priest alone, but by the extent of our integration together. When one of you succeeds in organizing an activity, or in chanting a hymn, or in teaching, or even in good reception, this is a success for the whole body and a feast for the whole family. We face today, in exile, great challenges such as distance, the constant busyness of life, and the danger of the dissolution of identity among our rising generations. From here, service by the gifts in this church becomes a means of survival and protection for our faith and our authenticity. Service is not an additional activity that we do if we have time; rather, it is the pulse of our Christian life, and a guarantee that our church will remain an oasis of rest and peace for our children after us.
In the Church today, and here, roles are not distributed according to positions or titles, but are distributed according to the gifts that God has granted to each of us. For it is not necessary that the priest alone possess all the gifts that the parish needs, and all these gifts may also not be available in the parish council; rather, we work together to complete every shortcoming, and you must complete what is lacking in my work and in the work of the parish council. Therefore the Apostle Paul does not impose designated roles; he pushes the responsibility to place it upon everyone, and opens the horizons for the whole church, saying: whoever has the gift of service, let him serve, and whoever has the gift of teaching, let him teach, and whoever has the gift of administration, let him be diligent.
This is the call of the Apostle Paul, and I call you today together with Paul: let each one of you come forward and serve with the gift that he has — administration, marketing, media, commerce, music, art and drawing, writing, receiving the newcomers, organization, cooking — any gift is important to us for our growth together.