Serving God at the surface appears like a very noble and upright thing to do. However, it is extremely common for those who sincerely desire to serve God to end up losing their soul.
[featured-image single_newwindow=”false”]’Christ and the Rich Young Ruler’ by Heinrich Hofmann[/featured-image]
Here is why:
Let’s envision a common scenario. A college graduate is on fire with the faith and can not wait to get involved in youth ministry. They apply to 10 different jobs and are finally hired to help run a youth ministry program for a large suburban parish. Before coming there, the youth ministry program was non-existent and the pastor now wants to focus on building up a strong youth group.
The fresh youth minister is so excited that he decides to offer a nightly youth group that meets twice a week in addition to a social after Mass on Sunday. He quickly finds out that many of the young people in his group are in need of additional help and begins meeting with them on a daily basis.
At first this youth minister is on fire and nothing seems to slow him down. After one year and numerous trips to youth conferences in addition to the weekly/daily meetings, the youth minister starts to slow down. By the second year, he starts looking for a new job and by the beginning of his third year he quits his job and is now unemployed, and never wants to go back to youth ministry again. In fact, he has long quit going to daily Mass, reluctantly attends the latest Sunday Mass and hasn’t been to confession in over a year.
In summary, the youth minister is spent, tired and extremely exhausted. What went wrong?
This scenario is all too common in the Catholic Church as the average employment of a youth minister is between 1-3 years and often they never go back to youth ministry. I am using the example of a youth minister as a general example, but the principle that I am about to explain applies to everyone.
Essentially what happened is that this youth minister got it all wrong. He lived his entire life “on the outside,” focusing all of his efforts on his ministry. As a result, he neglected his own prayer life and forgot to even discern what God was calling him to do.
Serving God is a good thing, but it should never be at the expense of your soul.
Here is a drawing of how our life should be ordered:
- First of all, we should devote ourselves to prayer and our own spiritual life. If we do not, we become like a “channel” instead of a “reservoir.” Water goes in and out of a channel, but water in a reservoir remains and overflows. Saint Bernard put it this way:
“If you are wise, you will be reservoirs and not channels.…The channels let the water flow away, and do not retain a drop. But the reservoir is first filled, and then, without emptying itself, pours out its overflow, which is ever renewed over the fields which it waters.” (The Soul of The Apostolate
by Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard)
- Secondly, we need to be firmly rooted in our vocation. That could be the married life, priesthood, consecrated life, or a person could be currently discerning which path God is calling him/her to. Whatever your vocation is, we need to be faithful above all things to the calling that God has given us. What use is it if I am a powerful speaker, who changes lives, but my marriage ends in divorce and my children hate me because I am never there?
- Last of all comes our ministry and temporal work. Not all of us are called to full-time Church ministry, but we all have some sort of work that we engage in and many of us also do a lot of volunteer work at our local parish. This should always be the fruit of our prayer and vocation. We will never be successful in our ministry or work if we do not have a firm foundation of prayer and are fully committed to our vocation.
We live in an extremely busy world and it is easy to get caught up in our work or ministry. We might even be doing real good and are having a positive impact on those around us. But if we are losing our soul and are neglecting our family, it is never worth it.
This is a common pitfall of those involved in leadership positions in the Church, whether it be a lay person or a priest/religious. A priest, for example, could overexert himself so much that he never prays the Divine Office and rarely makes time for personal prayer. When it comes time for a vacation or day off, he forgets to celebrate Mass privately and refuses to anoint a parishioner because he is too tired. A priest without a personal prayer life and not rooted in his vocation is on thin ice.
In the end, this was the best advice I ever received as I personally exerted myself way too much in Church ministry and forgot to have a deep prayer life. Once I devoted myself to prayer and my family, everything else fell into place.
So as we go out into the world to serve God, let us not lose our soul in the process!
The Horarium: A Simple Guide to Creating a Daily Prayer Schedule That Will Change Your Life
(ebook)
We all know that prayer is important and that it should be a priority. We also know that in order to combat Satan, we must use numerous spiritual weapons. However, making prayer a priority is not always easy to do and we seem to always fail. This ebook is about reclaiming your prayer life and developing a daily schedule that will not only endure for the rest of your life, but also change your life.