Will You Let Me Be Your Servant?

“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your being, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” He relied to him, “You have answered correctly, do this and you will live.” But because he wanted to justify himself, he said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Luke 10:27-29 If you’re a regular attendee of the Five, you’ve probably heard the choir sing one of our favorite songs, the Servant Song. In part, it goes like this: “Will you let me be your servant?/ Let me be as Christ to you,/Pray that I may have the strength to/Let you be my servant, too.” It’s a song that’s mostly about serving the people around us from day to day, but every now and then, we have a chance to go out of our way to serve others. This fall break, SMU Catholic will once again go on an urban plunge into Vickery Meadow. Vickery is a neighborhood of Dallas with a high refugee and immigrant population, where most of our social justice efforts are focused. More than just a traditional community service trip, the focus of Urban Plunge is not so much on volunteer work as it is on simply getting to know the residents of the neighborhood, so that we can better serve them in the future. Just like in the song, the trip is a chance to serve others as well as be served. In the end, we learn just as much (probably more!) from the people we encounter than they learn from us. The four days include helping a newly arrived refugee family settle in to their new surroundings, volunteering at a local school, and attending mass at a local parish. We sleep in an apartment in Vickery owned by Catholic Charities, and don’t return to the SMU campus until the four days are over. It’s easy to forget while we’re there that we’re only a few miles down the road from ‘home’, and when we stop to remember this, it makes everything we experience that more powerful. If you’re interested in joining us this year, come to the info session tonight after Sunday supper to find out more.