God called me as his servant.

The prophecy of Isaiah that we have heard is about the Messiah, the Redeemer. Still, it is also a prophecy about the people of Israel, about God’s people: we can say that it is a prophecy about every one of us. The prophecy emphasizes that the Lord chose his servant from the womb: he says it twice. His servant was selected from the very beginning, from birth or even before birth. God’s people and each of us were chosen before birth. Not one of us has come into the world by chance or accident. Everyone has some purpose, some free lot, much election by God. I was born with the lot of being a child of God and a servant of God, with the task of serving and building. And that from the womb.

Yahweh’s servant Jesus served until death: it seemed a defeat, but it was a way of serving. And this highlights the way of service we must embrace in our lives. To serve is to give of yourself, to give yourself to others. To serve is not to demand benefits for each of us who do not serve. To serve is glory; and the glory of Christ is to serve to the point of giving up oneself, to the point of death, death on the cross. Jesus is a servant of Israel. God’s people are servants, and when they have moved away from this attitude of service, they are apostate people: they move away from the vocation that God has given them. And when each of us moves away from this vocation to serve, we move away from God’s love. And we build our lives on other loves, often idolatrously.

He chose us from our mother’s womb. There are lows in life: each of us is a sinner and can fall and has fallen. The only exceptions are the Virgin Mary and Jesus: we have all fallen and sinned. What is essential, however, is the attitude before God, who chose me, who anointed me a servant; it is the attitude of a sinner who can ask for forgiveness, just like Peter, who at first swears: “No, Lord, I will never deny you, no way!” – but after the cock crows, he cries. Regrets. That is the way of the servant: when he slips, when he falls, he asks for forgiveness.

On the contrary, when the servant cannot understand that he has fallen, when passion takes hold of him to such an extent that it leads him to idolatry, opens his heart to Satan, enters into the night, and this is what happened to Judas. Let us think today of Jesus, the Servant of the faithful in ministry. His vocation is to serve, even to the point of death, namely death on the cross. Let us think of each of us, a part of the people of God: we are servants, our vocation is to serve, not to benefit from our place in the Church.