What We’re Obliged to Do

“When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.’”  (Matthew 17:10)

All that we do, we are expected to do. Sometimes we think we are going above and beyond; but are we really? To the secular world we may seem to do this at times, but as Christians, the answer is “No”.  We only have to look to the gospels to see that we often aren’t even doing what we are obliged to do. We are called to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and visit those in prison. Jesus tells us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (Matthew 5:44). We are told to stop judging, “for as you judge, so will you be judged” (Matthew 7:2). In order to be a true disciple, Jesus tells us, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” (Mark 8:34) And Jesus reminds us that we are all sinners and, “If you do not repent, you will perish.” (Luke 13:3) These are only a few examples of what we are called to do. If we begin to think too highly of ourselves all we need to do is look to scripture for a dose of humility and see that we are not even measuring up.  But these reminders are not meant to beat us down but to help us persevere. When we think that we have done enough we get lazy but there is much work to be done. “The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few.”  (Luke 10:2)

When we do what we are called to do then we become more in union with God and our old self is replaced. It used to overwhelm me when God revealed another thing “wrong” with me. I felt like I was never going to be “good enough.” But I am learning to accept these “revelations” as gifts from God. Today during Mass he revealed another thing to me.  He reminded me that things of this world will never fill this empty place in my heart that only he can fill. At first, I started to be hard on myself for trying to do this again. But then I realized that it was a gift and I gave thanks to God and asked for him to help me overcome this desire to try and fill this hole with things that don’t work and often make it worse because I am preventing God from being able to fill it with his love.

“God has only one love, and when he loves, he can only give that kind of love. The Father wants to revive in us what takes place between himself and his Son.”  ~ Fr. Bernard Bro, O.P.

We are meant to have the perfect love that proceeds from the Father and the Son. In order to enter into this divine love, we need to identify ourselves with the desires of Christ. We need to desire to love the Lord with all our heart, all our being, all our strength and all our mind and to love our neighbor as ourselves. And we do this by loving and serving as Christ did, by doing what we are obliged to do.