The Charism of Service

By Sherry Weddell

This July 4, American Catholics will have something more than independence and fireworks to celebrate. It will mark the ninth celebration of the memorial of Blessed Catherine Jarrige, who was beatified in November of 1996. By any standards, Catherine, a French peasant and lay Dominican who outwitted a revolutionary government in order to keep Catholic life alive in a time of oppression, is a remarkable woman. But more remarkable is the fact that her exploits seem to have been empowered by a gift that we consider one of the most ordinary and unremarkable: the charism of service.

The charism of service empowers a Christian to be a channel of God’s purposes by recognizing the logistical gaps or unmet needs that can prevent good things from happening, and by personally doing whatever it takes to solve the problem and meet the need. Christians with this charism see what the rest of us can so often miss: organizational roadblocks and practical gaps that hinder the fruit of good works. They are gifted with a kind of radar that identifies and anticipates actual or potential practical problems.

Those with a gift of service are also energized by the challenge of taking action themselves to solve the problem they have recognized. These are the people who will set up chairs without being asked when the facilitator of a meeting falls sick, or will spot a vacancy in a schedule of ushers and fill in before anyone is missed.

People with the gift of service really know what it takes to get a job done and are willing to personally do whatever is necessary. Usually able to take care of most any practical task, servers are the hard working backbone of any community. They are usually deeply involved in their local parish or Christian community because they find it intolerable that events and programs should be hampered for want of a little common sense and elbow grease.

Of course, their sense is anything but common. Catherine Jarrige, for example, was shrewd, fearless, and absolutely ingenious. During the French Revolution, all Christian churches and monasteries in France were closed. Priests were captured and routinely executed. Catherine set up an underground for hunted priests, hid them in robber’s dens and provided them with food, shelter, safe passage, and false papers. In her region, no babies went unbaptized and no one died without last rites. The entire religious life of the area rested on her capable shoulders for several years.

Catherine also helped restart parish life after the Revolution. There is real evidence that Catherine is still busy coming to others’ aid today. Attending her beatification ceremony in St. Peter’s was a man who had been miraculously healed at the age of six through Catherine’s intercession.

Another remarkable lay Dominican demonstrated a server’s practical creativity in Ireland 150 years earlier. Sir John Burke, the son of an Irish baron, ran an ingenious underground for Catholic priests in a time of persecution. In 1608, John’s castle was surrounded and attacked while Mass was being celebrated. John and his friends spirited the priests out a back way, but one priest was caught. John personally rode out into the surrounding enemy, rescued the priest, and then successfully fought his way through the English and disappeared into his own underground. After two years of living undercover, John was betrayed, arrested and condemned. In his final speech, he committed to the Dominican order the only treasure he left behind: an unborn child.

The eagerness of servers to move in and solve problems that others have not yet recognized can sometimes irritate others who may feel that the server is exaggerating the need. Those around a person with a charism of service can also resent the eager confidence with which the server tackles the task at hand. The authority that comes with the gift may even be mistaken for an attempt to take over leadership of a situation or group. The bewildered server, who only wanted to help, can find him- or herself perceived as a pushy busybody.

When we exercise any charism, it can seem so natural to see what we see and do what we do that we may find it difficult to believe that other Christians can be honestly unaware of what looms so large to us. But they are! Our different charisms help determine the different needs we see and color the way we go about meeting them. However, tempting as it might be to write off other Christians who seem uninterested in our own burning concerns, they are not simply lazy or oblivious. It may be that they see other things because they have been given other things to see. “If all the members were alike, where would the body be? The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I do not need you,’ any more than the head can say to the feet, ‘I do not need you’”(I Cor 12:19-22). One way to prevent misunderstanding is for the server to first quietly alert those about them to the problem they see. When other people have been first “sold” on the problem, they tend to appreciate rather than resent a solution.

A server’s energy can also be mistaken for a charism of leadership or administration. While an administrator can happily delegate parts of a task to others, those with a charism of service find delegation frustrating. They don’t want to coordinate some one else’s work; they want to do it themselves. Servers tend to be practical rather than visionary. They should not be expected to come up with new visions or create new programs, but should be given free reign to do that at which they are so gifted: identifying and eliminating those practical roadblocks that keep good things from happening.