There has been none greater than John the Baptist;
yet the least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than he. (Matthew 11:11)

As a teacher and a scholar of education, I am very familiar with the idea of service requirements for students.  School policy often dictates that students must satisfy expectations about the amount of time that the spend serving others.  If you ask students what they gain from their service that they give, they might respond that they gain “hours” for some arbitrary graduation requirement.  After all, the easy path is almost always to reduce these service encounters to a mere transactional endeavor.

Take a moment to consider how service is to you.  If your reflection is similar to mine, you might find that service can be transactional here as well.  For example, I have suggested to my adult child before that he highlight his service activities when he applies for jobs so that he might be a more desirable applicant.  And even for me, as a tenure-stream professor, I am expected to comment on my service if I hope to achieve tenure.

Today’s readings prompted me to reflect on how we engage the poor and marginalized – the least among us – the ones who need it most.  What do you give for your service?  What do you gain in return?  The answers to these questions will probably reveal a lot about your mindset when in comes to serving others.

Of course, some of this might be the reality of the world in which we live.  But, the psalmist writes, “the Lord is good and merciful – slow to anger, and of great kindness.”  For me, the important word of this passage is merciful.  To be merciful means to show compassion – to suffer with – to see the world through another’s eyes.  Jesus was and is a perfect picture of this compassion as we see in so many of his encounters with others.  Jesus’s compassion calls us to the same – to encounter others with steadfast grace and perfect humility, so that we too can understand their world through their eyes.

In quiet and still of this Advent season, we can and should take care to prepare ourselves for the coming of our Lord by examining our approach to mercy and service, and especially to what we give and gain in these encounters.   And when our approach shifts the focus to compassion, what we gain will be so much more valuable than hours, jobs, and advancement.
May the days and weeks leading to Christmas be quiet, reflective, and revealing to all of us seeking to grow closer to Him.