We Are Unprofitable Servants
“And when you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.’” Those words Our Lord spoke to his disciples are certainly among his most unsettling. What could he have meant by them?
As with all of Christ’s expressions, this one makes sense if we consider its context, and the man who is speaking it. In this case, Jesus was talking about servants. “Who among you would say to your servant...” And Christ himself is a servant. “The Son of Man has come to serve, not to be served.”
Going further, if we consider that the purpose of Christianity is to bring us into perfect conformity to Christ - and that union with Christ is the greatest thing a person could achieve - it stands to reason that there is no profit to be made beyond Christ, no greater thing to be gained than Christ himself. That is, since Christ is a perfect servant, then even after finally becoming saints, we remain, “unprofitable servants.”
Saint Thomas Aquinas was given a vision of Jesus toward the end of his life. Jesus asked him, “Thomas, you have written well of me. What would you have me give you?” He replied, “Nothing but you, Lord.” Thomas understood there was no profit apart from Christ.
Saint Therese of Lisieux famously said that she wanted to “spend [her] heaven doing good on earth.” She, too, understood that there is nothing to be gained apart from serving with Christ, no profit to be made beyond union with him.
Saint Paul said it best: “When I preach the gospel, I have no reason to boast, because I am obligated to preach.” Even when he praises the vocation of homemaker (a distasteful word these days), he does so to console any woman who would suffer envy of the man who must go in search of economic gain.
This past Monday, after Mass and confessions, when things got quieter for the holiday, I moved about the rectory gently cleaning, doing laundry, and catching up on some other things. It challenged that part of me that so often equates busyness with self worth, but it was greatly fulfilling, and it opened my heart to see the meaning of the words we heard the next morning at Mass: “When you have done all you have been commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.’”
My mother is fond of saying, “Elsewhere is a funny word. Else?” she asks, “Where is this else?” A similar oddity can be found in our work-obsessed mentality that believes life is about profit. While it is true that our economic models force us to depend upon the acquisition of currency for livelihood, nevertheless, as Our Lord said to his disciples on another occasion, “One’s life does not consist of possessions.” And when we fall into the trap of thinking that it does, we are elsewhere!
Ever present, however, is this great fact: that Christ is still with us, giving himself to us in the Eucharist, containing in himself all that we’re looking for, everything we’re trying to make and earn. And every encounter with Christ makes us rich in what matters to God, because the whole point of life is union with Christ. +