Real service begins with listening.
It is not the listening that waits for a turn to speak, but the kind that leans in, slows down, and truly hears.
When listening disappears, words do all the talking. Advice takes over where compassion should live.
But when we truly serve, something sacred happens. We meet Jesus in the faces of people we might otherwise walk past.
He shows up in those who are struggling, questioning, grieving, and hoping for something better.
Service tunes us into a holy frequency that listens with patience and reverence. It wakes up our hearts.
We often hold on to answers while forgetting the questions. Listening brings those questions back to life, creating a service that breathes compassion.
“We so often tend to deny our limitations
— Pope Francis
and avoid fragile and wounded people:
they have the power to question the direction we have chosen,
both as individuals and as a community.”
This is why listening is so hard. The fragile and wounded don’t just need our help; they reflect back to us our own brokenness, our own need. They ask us whether the life we’re living is the life we truly want to lead.
Love takes shape in action
This is where love takes shape, not as a feeling or an idea, but as action. It is bread broken and shared. It is the Gospel made visible, lived rather than just spoken or sung.
Jesus did not start a system; he knelt and washed feet. He broke bread with those others avoided and noticed the ones no one else saw. That is what God looks like when God moves.
Jesus’ friends looked away
In Matthew 25, Jesus doesn’t quiz people on their theology. He asks who they noticed. The hungry. The sick. The lonely. The stranger at the door; the people everyone else overlooked. He makes it plain: you see me in them.
And here’s the painful part – his own friends missed it.
When he was afraid in Gethsemane, they slept. When he was taken, they ran. When he was stripped and killed, they looked away. But it is those exact moments – the hunger, the thirst, the fear, the isolation – that he asks us to respond to.
Small things, great love
Service is not about performing heroic feats. It is about doing small, human things with great love. A meal, a blanket, a visit, or a hand on a shoulder are not side acts to the Gospel. They are the Gospel.
As Pope Francis once noted, love and charity are found in the service of others. When you forget yourself and think of others, that is love. Through the washing of the feet, the Lord teaches us to be servants as he was a servant to us.
Service in strange times
We live in strange times. Loneliness is pervasive. People go hungry in wealthy cities. We scroll endlessly but feel unseen. In the middle of this noise, service still whispers something true. It becomes the language of faith when words fall short.
If the church is to matter, it won’t be because we argued better or built bigger. It will be because someone felt welcome, found shelter, or was fed.
This is what people want to experience. This is what changes hearts.
Every quiet act of service, a shared meal, a listening ear, or a helping hand, pushes back against despair.
It is a quiet rebellion of hope.
It is a way of saying: “You matter. I see you. You are not alone; we travel together.”
“We are not on earth
– Pope John XXIII
to guard a museum,
but to tend
a blooming garden full of life.”
- Peter Roe SM – Drawing on his parish ministry experience and further training, he went on to found Wellintown, a centre for growth and reflection in Wellington, New Zealand. Nationally recognised, his team developed seminars such as One for the Blokes, for men facing challenges too heavy to handle alone.