John F. Kennedy once said,
“Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your
country.” President Kennedy was presenting us with the idea that we should not
be a selfish people. Can you guess who
else presented such an idea - an extreme idea of this? That’s right! Jesus! He said that He came “not to be served but to
serve” and “to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). Scripture tells us that God is love (1 John
4:8). And if God is love and He came to
serve, then to serve is to love. You
see, we were made for Love; we were made to imitate Love, to choose Love, and
to be Love to the world!
There are many ways to be
Love to the world, but I’ve found one of the simplest forms in service. When we place ourselves in the service of
others for the sake of Love, we forget ourselves completely and remain focused
on those in need. When we place
ourselves in the service of others, there is a part of our heart that opens and
we find a freedom that envelops and floods the soul! A couple of weeks ago I
had the privilege to lead a group of teens from our parish to the Steubenville
Atlanta Conference. There, we piloted a program, becoming the first large
Catholic Conference to do a service project. Catholic Relief Services and
Helping Hands got together to provide meals for Burkina Faso, West Africa. They
presented us with a challenge: 100,000 meals packaged in 2 hours. At first,
this seems like a daunting task, but you should have heard the room erupt in
acceptance of this challenge! It gave me goosebumps. These teens did not take the task lightly but
realized that their small gift would make a huge difference in the lives of
people they had never met. We had 4
rotating groups with a 30 minute window to help out. As our group went in the
large room staged like an assembly line, we found ourselves scattered all over
the room, but eager to get to work to do our part. In the 30 plus minutes we were in there we
packaged and boxed over 60,000 meals.
Our teens were enjoying themselves, racing one another and carefully
putting together each meal packet with love and enthusiasm! When the project leader told us our time was
up and to let the next group come in, our teens didn’t want to leave. As we
gathered back together, their hearts of service inspired me! Many of them asked
if we could bring this to our parish or if we could provide them with more
service opportunities –how could I could really say no? When all the youth
groups came back together in the large assembly room, they announced that we
had packaged over 100,000 meals. We actually packaged 100,386 meals to send to
Burkina Faso. The room burst with excitement and loud cheers.
These teens realized in
that moment that the smallest gift, even just 30 minutes of their time, could
truly make a difference in someone else’s life. In that short amount of time
their hearts were full and satisfied because they were doing what they were
created to do – love! Whoever says that the younger generation doesn’t care or
want to be bothered with service should have been in that room, should have
seen the faces of these teens and seen how twitter exploded with tweets,
hashtagging Pope Francis (#pontifex), about how awesome it was to be able to
participate and praising God for the opportunity to feed someone they didn’t
even know! This, ladies and gentlemen, is the future of our Church and I, for
one, look forward to seeing how they change the world! Let us remember that God
is love and that to love is to serve. Let’s stop asking what God can do for us
but what we can do for God!
To learn more about helping our brothers and sisters in Burkina Faso, click here
Written by Alycia
