Workers, Ministers and Prophets

This is a prayer attributed to martyred Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero. “This is what we are about: We plant seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are the prophets of a future not our own.”

     Isn’t that comforting? Isn’t that helpful? Isn’t that hopeful? It is so easy to begin to think that the future of the world, or perhaps our little corner of the world, rests on our shoulders, that without us it would all collapse. It certainly helps our ego to think this way and even enhances our self-image to act this way, but it is not any way to live. It is not only too burdensome, it is so wrong. There is only one master builder. The rest of us are workers.

     When we fulfill our vocation, whatever that vocation, that calling is, we are planting or watering or reaping. We are laying foundations or adding bricks to the structure. But we are not doing it all, nor can we. We do what we can, all that we can, the best we can and can do no more. That is all we are called to do. That is all God asks of us. And that is certainly enough.

     To think we are called to do more or even be more is to be rather presumptuous, isn’t it? Only those with some sort of messiah complex think that the world revolves about them and that it will collapse without their leadership and guidance. There is only one messiah. The rest of us are ministers and we minister when, again, we fulfill our vocation. We may not see ourselves as ministers or our job as ministry, but that is exactly who we are and what our job really is. To miss that truth is to misunderstand why God created us in the first place.

     We are not as important as we sometimes think we are. We often learn that truth the hard way as our pride takes a good licking. On the other hand it is so easy to lose sight of the fact that as unimportant as we also sometimes feel we are, we are not so unimportant that the world does not need us. The world needs us, needs our gifts and talents. And when we use those gifts to the best of our ability, whatever those gifts are, the world will be better for it and so will the world to come.

     Our vocation, our calling, our ministry is prophetic when it is lived to the fullest because it speaks of who we are and what God calls everyone to be. It speaks to a generation not yet born, to a future that is not yet but one that needs to hear what we have taught by the work we have done and the ministry we have fulfilled.

     We have a legacy to pass on, you and I. That is our calling and that is our gift to a generation and generations yet unborn. That legacy is fulfilled one day at a time, one person at a time. What kind of legacy we leave is up to us.     

                                                                                     WJP