St. Mary of Vernon Catholic Church

With the Alpha Omega Summer Mission Trip less than a month away, I’m sure you can understand why my thoughts continue to be pulled in that direction. This, the sixth annual mission trip for Youth Ministry, will see around 13 adults and 62 teens off to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for a week of working, playing, and praying hard. As you can imagine it takes quite a bit of money to support this effort.

Recently, as we were “staking our territory” in the Narthex for another of our fundraising efforts, I found myself bumping into displays and set-ups for other ministries of our parish. This got me thinking about how much our parish does in the way of “Service.”

SMV has many Ministries whose primary mission is that of service: P.A.D.S. (Public Action to Deliver Shelter) provides people meals and a place to sleep; Sharing Hands Food Pantry supplements many families’ food requirements; our Ministers of Care share the Eucharist with homebound individuals and those in nursing homes; the Transportation Ministry gets elderly parishioners to medical appointments; Sharing Hands Furniture Ministry gets beds and other furniture to families in need; Caring Hands and Hearts provides assistance to primary care givers; Grief Support assists people in getting through the grieving process; Bereavement Ministry assists families in preparing for funeral masses; and we have a close connection with the C.O.V.E. Alliance (Children’s Outreach & Vocational Education) - the dream of Fr. Hilary of opening an orphanage and vocational school in Uganda. Many other parish ministries reach out in service on an ongoing basis including: the Men’s Club, the Knights of Columbus, Scouts, Youth Ministry, P.R.E.P. (Parish Religious Education Program), Y.A.B.C. (Young Adults Becoming Community), S.A.M. (Single Adult Ministry), “Operation Reach Out” to our military men & women, and others. Our parish has eyes willingly open to seeing the needs of others, hands ready to assist where needed, and incredibly generous hearts.

I recently met with one of our college students, a young woman who had been very active in Youth Ministry while in high school, who excitedly told me of her trip to South America. While there she experienced how the radically poor live, visited the church where Bishop Oscar Romero was killed, and served the people she met. In addition, she shared with me an article which she read in a college class as preparation for her trip. Written by Rachel Naomi Remen, it is entitled In the Service of Life. In this article I found a distinction which I want to share with you: the difference between helping and serving.

In her article, which appeared in the Noetic Sciences Review in 1996, Remen wrote: “Serving is different from helping. Helping is based on inequality; it is not a relationship between equals. When you help you use your own strength to help those of lesser strength. If I’m attentive to what’s going on inside of me when I am helping, I find that I’m always helping someone who is not as strong as I am, who is needier than I am. People feel this inequality. When we “help” we may inadvertently take away from people more than we could ever give them; we may diminish their self-esteem, their sense of worth, integrity, and wholeness. When I help, I am very aware of my own strength. But, we don’t serve with our strength, we serve with ourselves. We draw from all of our experiences. Our limitations serve, our wounds serve, and even our darkness can serve. The wholeness in us serves the wholeness in others and the wholeness in life. The wholeness in you is the same as the wholeness in me. Service is a relationship between equals… We cannot serve at a distance. We can only serve that to which we are profoundly connected, that which we are willing to touch. This is Mother Teresa’s basic message. “We serve life not because it is broken but because it is holy.”

It is my hope that we will all choose not to “help” but to truly serve. I hope that we operate out of the realization that when we serve we are serving our brothers and sisters not strangers. And I hope that we always remember that it was Christ himself who showed us how to serve - with our whole body and heart and soul.

Jim Welch, SMV Youth Minister