Isaiah 49: 3-6

3 He said to me, You are my servant, in you, Israel, I show my glory.   

God intends to show His glory through people. But what does God mean by “glory”? Here, the Hebrew word is פָאַר “paar” and it generally translates as “beautify” or “glorify.” God intends to use us, His people, to beautify His Creation. He intends to use us to reveal His glory. Notice that God does not intend to use what we do to show His glory. God intends to use who we are. This sounds very familiar: When Hannah prays for a child, she claims “My heart exults in the Lord.” (1 Samuel 2:1). When Mary visits Elizabeth, she proclaims, “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my savior.” (Luke 1:46-47). In both situations, the mothers are not great because of what they have done. They are great because of what God has done in them.

4 Though I thought I had toiled in vain,

for nothing and for naught spent my strength,

How often do we echo Isaiah and feel that all of our actions are to no avail? How often do we feel that we are working our hardest to follow God and listen to His voice in our lives, but we are falling short? It is easy to fall into despair and think that our prayers and our good work is going unnoticed. What is despair? The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes despair as being a sin against hope: “Despair is contrary to God’s goodness, to his justice- for the Lord is faithful to his promises- and to his mercy.” (CCC 2091). God is good and God is just. Actually, God is more than that. God is goodness itself. God is justice itself. This does not mean that justice will happen on earth, but it will happen.

My husband is in law enforcement. In the process of his work, he learns all about specific criminal’s personal lives, their histories, their own childhoods and how they ended up on the other side of his desk. When we first got married, I was very harsh of these “bad guys.” My husband opened my eyes to see that these men and women are, yes, criminals who need to serve time in prison and repay their debt to society and their victims. But very often, they are victims themselves in many ways. Many of them had unspeakable terrors inflicted on them as children. Many of them had profoundly dysfunctional families and no adults who appeared to love them or care for them. Many of them were simply trying to feed their own families and made a series of bad decisions. What have I learned listening to my husband’s stories about these children of God? There is no real justice on earth. Justice is God’s. Our system is only as great as the people who work in it and that means that they are still humans, prone to errors. We can do our best, with the best legal system on the planet and the best lawyers and law enforcement officers- but in the end, only God can provide real, authentic, actual justice. How our system sees and treats these people is likely not the same way God’s justice will treat them.

Yet my right is with the LORD,

my recompense is with my God. 

5 For now the LORD has spoken

who formed me as his servant from the womb,   

We are created, from the beginning, to be servants of God. Our entire being and personhood is designed to fulfill that God-given role and responsibility. The Hebrew word is עֶבֶד “ebed.” It is translated as “servant” and “slave.” When the Israelites are “slaves in Egypt,” the word is ebed. When they claim that they will “serve God,” they are using the same word, ebed. This one word is the hinge around which all of Passover and the Exodus rotates: Who will you serve? Will you serve Pharaoh, or will you serve God? You will be a servant to someone, but you may choose who that is: God or man. We hear this echoed in Jesus’ words, “you cannot serve God and mammon (wealth)” (Matthew 6:24). This same choice is for us today. We must choose who we will serve. 

That Jacob may be brought back to him

and Israel gathered to him;

I am honored in the sight of the LORD,

and my God is now my strength!

6 It is too little, he says, for you to be my servant,

to raise up the tribes of Jacob,

and restore the survivors of Israel;

I will make you a light to the nations,

that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.

This is where the rubber hits the road. God does not want us to be His servants. What, you ask? Did’t Isaiah just say that God created us to be His servants from the beginning? Yes, but that’s not good enough, says God. God’s goal for His children is not to just have a bunch of slaves/ servants running around doing His will. His goal is that we will be “a light to the nations.” What does light do? It destroys darkness. Remember our discussion about Genesis 1:1 and God proclaiming that light is “good”? By saying that light is “good,” that implies that darkness is “bad.” With this morality assigned to light, and our ultimate goal to be “a light,” we know that God is calling us to be goodness. A servant of God acts “good.” But the “light to the nations” is goodness. Again, we hear Mary’s words, “my soul magnifies the Lord.” This is our challenge, to move from being the servants of God that He has called us and created us to be, to being the very magnifier that embodies the light and goodness of God in the world.

This leaves us with our ultimate question: Will you let God work His plan in you?

Take it to the kitchen table:

When St. Louis de Montfort describes his “holy slavery” to Jesus through Mary, he is recalling the concept of “slave” and “servant” being synonymous. 

From Chapter 2 of True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin:

Now there are three kinds of slavery; natural slavery, enforced slavery, and voluntary slavery. All creatures are slaves of God in the first sense, for “the earth and its fullness belong to the Lord”. The devils and the damned are slaves in the second sense. The saints in heaven and the just on earth are slaves in the third sense. Voluntary slavery is the most perfect of all three states, for by it we give the greatest glory to God, who looks into the heart and wants it to be given to him. Is he not indeed called the God of the heart or of the loving will? For by this slavery we freely choose God and his service before all things, even if we were not by our very nature obliged to do so.

In English, there are discreet differences between a slave and a servant. Servants can leave their employment, slaves cannot. Servants earn money and have personal property, slaves often cannot. Servants are working to be self-reliant, slaves are not. Slavery is utter dependance on your “owner” for your life, your family, your work, your shelter, your food, your water, everything. When the Founding Fathers listed what the “inalienable rights” are in the Declaration of Independence, they listed “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” They started with “life” because without life, nothing else is possible. The followed with “liberty” because without liberty, nothing else is possible. They finished with “pursuit of happiness” recognizing that without life and liberty, the pursuit of happiness is not possible. 

Yet in the Hebrew, there is no difference. The “servant of the Lord” is the same as the “slave of the Lord.”

Make it yours:

• I once heard Fr. Larry Richards speak and he said that, “when we die, we get what we truly love.” At first that sounds like a good deal, until you start to think about what your life shows you really love. I say I love God, and I do. But according to my planner, I spend an awful lot of time doing laundry and cleaning the house. That is not to say that I should not do those things- I should. The challenge is how to make those things, the daily work of my vocation, a prayer and a statement of my love for God.
• Whom do you serve? Whom do you say you serve? Does your schedule reflect that decision? We often say we serve God, but our planners tell a very different story. 
• Joshua 24:15 says, “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” The Hebrew is ebed. Joshua is saying, “My household, my entire family and all who lives with us, choose to be slaves of God.”
• This service and slavery to God is an important first step to becoming the “light to the nations” that is God’s goal for us. What can you do to foster your soul on that journey? What are some of the moments that you have been a light to the nations?
• Mary said, “my soul magnifies the Lord.” How does your soul magnify the Lord? How can you clean off your magnifying lens so that the light of God can shine through more clearly?

Teach it:

Put the words of Joshua in a prominent place, maybe above your key holder. 

In our house, we discuss the concept of “God vs. Pharaoh” very often. It is a way to discuss someone’s motivations, without simply saying, “he’s evil,” or “it’s the devil.” When we make those statements, it is easy to discount the human factor, because it’s not entirely the person’s fault- it’s the devil. 

Here’s an example:

We watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” every year during Advent. George Bailey wants to leave Bedford Falls. He attempts over and over again to set himself up to leave the small town he grew up in. He tries to go to college, join various expeditions and adventures, take his wife on a fantastic honeymoon. At every stage along the way, he is thwarted and is unable to escape. Why? Because in each of those moments where the train whistles are calling to him, a crisis presents itself and he must make a pivotal choice: do I do what I want to do or do I do what I should do? He plans to go to Europe, but his father has a stroke and passes away. He chooses to stay and tend to the burial of his father and the subsequent business problems that arise. He is scheduled to go to college, but doing so would solidify the dissolution of the business his father spent his life building- a business that allows the working people of Bedford Falls to own their own homes. George gives his brother his college money and sends him instead of himself. At every step, George must choose between serving God and serving himself (Pharaoh). To serve God means helping his fellow working men own a home they can raise their own children in. Serving himself would be to let that service implode as he attends college. George Bailey denies his own wishes in the interest of serving his fellow men. George’s antagonist is a man named Mr. Potter. He is selfish, manipulative, and self-serving. He repeatedly attempts to get George to bend to his will by appealing to his own self-interest. He is Pharaoh. He relies upon himself, views himself as God-like and thinks of no-one else. Additionally, George’s main problem through the movie is his inability to see his life within the broader scheme of what God has in store for Bedford Falls. As such, he exhibits frustration with feelings of being trapped, when in fact he is actually extremely gifted by those whom he has helped to free. 

But what does all of this have to do with serving God vs. Pharaoh? 

When we watch this movie, we discuss it in those terms. Who is George serving, God or Pharaoh? Because we use this terminology in our daily lives, we can use it when we look at the morality of a movie like “It’s a Wonderful Life.” We can use it when we discuss the behavior of people in TV commercials; or TV shows; or books; etc. etc. etc.

Sidenote:

If you are not commenting on the morality of people’s behavior in commercials and TV shows with your children, you should be. Your children look to you to either condemn or condone the behavior that your children see around them. I remember one day watching a commercial in which a child was refusing a breakfast that had been cooked by his mother. It was supposed to be funny, but I could tell that my children were bothered by it and were looking at me expectantly. I had mostly tuned out the commercial, but their faces snapped me back. I commented, “Wow! That little boy is being very rude to his mother! I’m so glad that you guys don’t behave like that.” I could hear the sighs of relief around the room. With no comment from me, they were confused: they knew that children should not behave that way, but I wasn’t saying anything, so maybe it was OK?!?!

Our job and God-given role and responsibility is to teach our children, so we need to use every opportunity to do that.

De Montfort, True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin. The Company of Mary, Monfort Missionaries, General Delegation of Great Britain and Ireland. https://www.montfort.org.uk/Writings/TD.php