Christian Life is Service

I once told a priest about feeling depressed, and he suggested volunteer work as a remedy. Volunteer work was not the answer I was looking for. I had done bibs and bobs of it, beginning in Girl Guides, and found it incredibly boring and even frightening. I hated selling daffodils to strangers outside the supermarket for the Canadian Cancer Society, and the main draw to helping seniors play bingo was the biscuits and sugar cubes. (We didn’t have sugar cubes at home.) Selling Girl Guide cookies–ugh. Stuffing envelopes for the Right to Life–those years were past (I thought).

What I have since figured out is that “service” is a better concept than “volunteer work” and that it is different for everyone. Service is, in fact, tailor-made in the atelier of heaven. And it turned out that the service that fits me is hospitality. Once my Toronto theology school felt like home, I welcomed newcomers to it. I loved my time there, so it was not difficult to smile upon homesick scholastics and ask them how they were. I forget if I ever made the tea, but I always went to the weekly social and socialized like mad.

It was very different from serving at a food bank in the slum where the indigent volunteered so they could get the best stuff and the manager looked at his watch when I was late. My sole good memory of the place is comforting a refugee ex-professor from Latin America who was absolutely mortified at needing a food bank; I managed to hit upon the right thing to say.

After I graduated, I found out from a visitor that possessing a friendly face in cold Toronto had made a real difference to one particular scholastic in his first miserable year. I was surprised that something so small and easy to do had had such an effect–until I remembered a letter from a cafe patron stating that teenage barista me had unknowing helped him survive his divorce. Really, it’s amazing how much cheerful greetings really matter to people.

So all this is to say that service can be great fun and align with your talents. It’s not an absolute, of course, as service isn’t always great fun. Marriage and parenthood are the principal service most adults are called to, and my marriage now involves carrying a big metal ramp that sometimes nips my ankle. However, the extracurriculars should be 90% fun, and indeed if I am feeling low at Mass, setting out After-Mass Tea (with help) cheers me up enormously.

Another wonderful thing about After-Mass Tea is watching other TLMers pitch in. It never ceases to be a joy to see a Young Person (or Younger-than-Me Person) come into the kitchen and ask if they can help. It’s like getting a gift, only the gift is not just for me but for everybody there. Also, my estimation of the Young Person, probably already high, goes up again. Being over a certain age, I allow the phrase Marriage Material to flit through my mind. Young People who take up a tea towel, Marriage Material. Young People who leave their cups for others to collect, not so much. You would not think that offering to dry dishes would matter so much, but it does.

In terms of organizing dances, I welcome volunteers even more joyfully than at After-Mass Tea. The effort needed to have a successful ceilidh is much greater than that needed to have a companionable coffee hour. Thus, I am delighted that I now have a volunteer bagpiper, kitchen manager (yay!), classical musicians, folk musicians, and ceilidh callers. Young People have always helped with the dishes afterward, and I’m very grateful for that because our halls are booked only until midnight. And I am very grateful for the leadership qualities of my volunteers, for it means I will be able to relax on Easter Friday night and concentrate on hospitality.