The Spiritual Servant
The Spiritual Servant
There is a question that stirs within my soul and in my depths: Are we truly servants?
It is easy for one of us to think of himself more highly than he ought to think (Rom. 12), and to imagine that he is a servant of God, while service in its deep spiritual essence has lofty standards that perhaps we have not yet reached. Or perhaps we began as spiritual servants but did not preserve this character throughout the journey. Let us therefore search together: who is the servant?
The spiritual servant is a beautiful hymn in the ears of the Church, and a pure icon by which everyone who sees it is blessed. He is a ladder that reaches to heaven, upon which his disciples always ascend upward.
He is a bridge that transfers others from the shore of worldliness to the shore of spirituality, or from time to eternity. He is the voice of God to people—not a human voice, but a mouth through which God speaks, conveying to people the word of God.
The spiritual servant is a divine grace sent from heaven to earth… a visitation of grace by which God visits some of His people, offering them a taste of the Kingdom and the flavor of true life.
The spiritual servant is a living Gospel, or a moving Church. He is the image of God before his disciples, a model of lofty ideals, an example of good works, and a means of every virtue.
The spiritual servant constantly feels that he is in the presence of God, and service for him is like a holy altar, and his work in it is a fragrant incense. The mission of the spiritual servant is to bring God into the service, while he repeats in his heart the psalmist’s saying: “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it” (Ps. 127:1).
The spiritual servant continually feels brokenness and unworthiness.
He feels that it is beyond his level to prepare saints and to prepare for the Lord a justified people, fully realizing that the salvation of human souls is higher than himself—it is the work of God. His participation with God in the work, and his partnership with the Holy Spirit in building the Kingdom and purifying hearts, are all things he does not deserve. Yet despite his sense of unworthiness, he does not flee from service. Rather, this feeling drives him to more prayer, as he continually says to the Lord: “This service, O Lord, is Your work and not mine. You will surely work through me or through others. I am merely a spectator who contemplates Your work and rejoices” (John 3:29).
Truly, “neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase” (1 Cor. 3:7). So work, O Lord, Your work, and gladden the hearts of Your children. Do not withhold from them Your Holy Spirit because of my mistakes, my weaknesses, or my shortcomings. Thus, through his persistence in supplication, the servant receives grace from God. And when the service succeeds, he gives glory to the Lord who accomplished the whole work.
The spiritual servant is continually a man of prayer.
By prayer he serves his children, and by prayer he resolves the problems of service. Prayer for him is like breathing in and out, as the Fathers said. Some servants think that the height of dedication to service is to work. But the spiritual servant sees that the height of perfection is that God works. This does not mean laziness or inaction—by no means! Rather, he works with all diligence and self-giving, yet it is not he, but God who works in him, as Saint Paul the Apostle said: “Yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me” (1 Cor. 15:10), and also: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).
The spiritual servant is a flame kindled with fire.
He is a burning zeal for the salvation of souls, saying with David the Prophet: “I will not go into the chamber of my house, nor go up to the comfort of my bed; I will not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids… until I find a place for the Lord” in the heart of everyone (Ps. 132:3–5).
The spiritual servant is the sweet aroma of Christ (2 Cor. 2:15).
People sense from him the fragrance of Christ, because he is Christ’s epistle read by all. He is a burnt offering of a pleasing aroma to the Lord (Lev. 1), in which the divine fire burns, blazing and unquenchable, until it turns it into ashes.
The spiritual servant is a continuous, tireless movement toward God—or rather, a movement within the heart of God, because of a divine movement within his own heart. He labors continually for the rest of others, and his true rest is in bringing every person to the heart of God. He is a candle that gives light to all who are within its radiance, and it may melt in warmth, light, and love so that people may be illumined by it, and so that the Lord’s saying may be fulfilled: “You are the light of the world” (Matt. 5:14).
The spiritual servant is a person constantly striving with God.
He struggles with the Holy Trinity for himself and for the people, to receive from God a promise for the sake of those he serves, so that their souls may prosper and be acceptable before God (3 John 2).
The spiritual servant is spirit, not merely intellect.
He is not merely a teacher, nor a bearer of information to transmit to people. Rather, he is a great spirit united with God, who has experienced life with Him and tasted how good the Lord is, and desires to transmit this life to others—through feelings, through living example, through good example, and through prayer and supplication for those he serves.
He does not merely deliver lessons; he himself is the lesson.
He is the sermon before being a preacher. He realizes that preparing lessons or sermons is not merely preparing information, but preparing himself to be fit for the work of the Spirit in him. He continually remembers the Lord’s saying: “For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth” (John 17:19). He sets before him the words that Saint Paul the Apostle said to his disciple Timothy the bishop: “Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine. Continue in them, for in doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you” (1 Tim. 4:16).
The disciples of the spiritual servant do not need visitation,
because they themselves long eagerly for his lesson. When they see him in church, they are like those who have found great spoil. They benefit from his presence and his dealings as much as—perhaps more than—from his words. He can bind them with love by a strong bond that powerfully draws them to the Church, and his lesson becomes a delight to their souls, spirits, hearts, and minds.
The spiritual servant loves his disciples and loves the salvation of their souls.
His love for them is part of his love for God and His Kingdom. He loves them as Christ loved His disciples, of whom it was said: “Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end” (John 13:1). The spiritual servant loves God with all his heart and wants his disciples to love God as he does. When they love God, his love for them increases in compassion and in striving for their salvation. Through this love, he gives them a radiant image of religion and of God.
The spiritual servant’s children are spiritual like him,
because he raises them in the life of the Spirit, so they become like him and according to the same measure. The social servant produces social children, and the purely intellectual servant produces children who are merely books carrying information. How true is the Scripture in the creation account, when God created “trees bearing fruit according to their kind… whose seed is in itself according to its kind” (Gen. 1:11–12). If this is so, let us beware how we ourselves are, for our children will be according to our likeness and image.
The spiritual servant feels that his children are a trust upon his neck.
He will give an account for them before God on the Day of Judgment. They are God’s children, whom He entrusted to his hands to serve them and to give them their food in due season (Luke 12:42). Therefore, he works continually in the fear of God, aware of his responsibility.
I want every servant to ask himself about three matters: the spirituality of his service, the spirituality of his life, and the spirituality of his children.
The spirituality of his life is for the sake of his eternity and the salvation of his soul, and because of the influence of his life on those he serves. The spirituality of his service is so that it may be fruitful in producing a spiritual generation. As for the spirituality of his children, it requires effort, patience, and long-suffering.
The spiritual servant is very patient until his seeds sprout,
grow, become green, blossom, and bear fruit. He does not become distressed or despair if their sprouting, blossoming, or fruit-bearing is delayed. Rather, he strives as much as he can, involves God with him, and keeps before him the apostle’s saying: “We then who are strong ought to bear with the scruples of the weak” (Rom. 15:1).
Some souls do not bear fruit quickly, and some cannot rid themselves of their faults rapidly. These and those need someone who is long-suffering with them until they are saved, just as God is long-suffering with us to lead us to repentance (Rom. 2:4). Saint John Chrysostom said: “If the physical fetus needs long months until its growth is completed and it is born, then let us be patient with the spiritual fetus until its growth is completed.”
Finally, I am not able to complete all that can be said about the spiritual servant in this one article. So until we meet in the next article, if the grace of the Lord wills and we live.
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