Get out your chains, prepare for your crown

Are you a slave or a king?

Which do you want to be?

Of course, the obvious answer is wanting to be a king.

But we are exploring stewardship, and -- now that Easter is here -- we are exploring the stewardship of service. The word "service" comes from the Latin servio, meaning to be a slave, or to serve another.

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Then, if we are called to be stewards, doesn't it seem less likely that we are called to be kings?

And yet it is not meant to be a dichotomy. As Christians, we are called to be both slaves and kings. Just as Jesus was both Suffering Servant and King of Kings, we are called to follow in his footsteps: "To reign is to serve" (Litany in honor of Jesus, King of all Nations).

In one Holy Thursday homily (1998), Pope John Paul reminded us that the lesson Jesus gave us by washing his disciples' feet is the true example of service. Thus, a true servant of Christ imitates Jesus by being "prompt in serving others, even with personal sacrifice. Indeed, service, that is, caring for our neighbor's needs, is the essence of any well-ordered authority: to reign is to serve."

The king becomes a servant. This is the dichotomy to which baptism calls us. Jesus, equal to God, became a slave. As Paul said, Jesus emptied himself. And, for that, he was raised up and given the "name above all other names" (Phil 2:6-11), which is none other than the divine title itself.

We are likewise called to such glory, called to be one with God, just as is Jesus. We are called to be kings, just like the king who served.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that "the People of God share in the royal office of Christ ... For the Christian, 'to reign is to serve him,' particularly when serving 'the poor and the suffering, in whom the Church recognizes the image of her poor and suffering founder.'" (786)

In exploring the stewardship of service, our diocese calls us to look at both scripture and Catholic social teaching and find several recurrent themes. The first of these is "the dignity of every human person," a dignity which derives from the dignity of Christ and the image of God.

"When we deal with each other," the U.S. bishops wrote, "we should do so with the sense of awe that arises in the presence of something holy and sacred. For that is what human beings are: we are created in the image of God" (Economic Justice for All, 28).

From the first moment of creation, we were made in the very image of God, and that stamp of divinity was fully revealed in the humanity of Jesus. In the frail body of a man -- capable of hunger, fatigue, dirty feet, illness, pain and death -- God revealed divinity.

"He Who is 'the image of the invisible God' (Col. 1:15), is Himself the perfect man," Vatican II told us, "To the sons of Adam, he restores the divine likeness ..." (GS 22).

Because of this "divine likeness," all people have sacred dignity. As servants of God, we are called to recognize our King, that sacred dignity, wherever he appears and to serve him. We must recognize the divine royalty we possess, as well as serve the divine royalty possessed by all those around us -- we must love our neighbors as ourselves because we all have sacred dignity.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta recognized her king wherever she saw him. She was once asked how she could bring herself to touch, even pick up, the filthiest of the sick, those oozing with sores and near death. She replied that she did not see the dirt and filth so much as she saw the face of Christ. Mother Teresa of Calcutta will be beatified on Oct. 19, officially joining the ranks of those whom the church honors as the nobility of heaven. Yet we who remember her life know that her nobility shone most clearly through her service.

"If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another's feet," says Jesus in John's gospel (13:14). This gospel, more than any other gospel, presents readers with a clear choice: "Who do you say that I am?"

If we believe that Jesus is God, then we must answer: "You are the King, the servant Son of God." And in saying that, we will recognize that "no slave is greater than his master" (Jn 13:16), and answer the call to serve as He did. Through that service, we reveal the divine image that lives in us.

"To reign is to serve."