A word to the servants of Saint Peter and Saint Andrew Church
In the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.
May the blessing of the Father who calls us, and His Only Begotten Son who saves us, and the Holy Spirit who sanctifies and transforms us be with us all, that we may hear His word and bear fruit — thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold. Amen.
Introduction
“Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me?” … “Feed My sheep.”
John 21:17 (NKJV)
My dear beloved servants,
I want to begin today with honesty, because you deserve honesty from your father.
We have a problem in our service, and all of us can see it. Some weeks a class has no teacher. Some of us come when it is convenient and disappear when life gets busy. Some of us still come, but our hearts have stopped coming. We prepare the lesson in the car. We teach it. We leave. And the children can tell.
I am not here to nag you or guilt you. If guilt could build servants, every church would be full of them. I want something deeper for you than guilt. I want you to understand what is really happening when we lose our commitment, and I want you to leave today with a fire that does not depend on me.
Recently I spent time with a book by Abouna Matta El-Meskeen, written for servants more than fifty years ago, simply called Al-Khidma, “Service.” In the very first pages, he draws a line that I have not been able to stop thinking about. He says there is a great difference between a teacher of religion and a servant of the spirit:
«الأول يلقن المعرفة والثاني يبني النفس … الأول ناقل كلمة يقولها كما سمعها وتعلمها، والثاني يلد الكلمة من بطنه فتتفجر من أعماقه كما يتفجر الينبوع من باطن الأرض»
“The first passes on knowledge; the second builds the soul… The first carries a word and repeats it as he heard it. The second gives birth to the word from within himself, and it bursts out of his depths the way a spring bursts out of the earth.”
Al-Khidma, p. 6
That is the whole question today. Not “Are you on the schedule?” but “Is there a spring in you?”
Let me take you to the shore of the Sea of Tiberias, after the Resurrection. Peter is there. Peter, who had promised he would never leave the Lord, and then denied Him three times beside a fire. Now there is another fire, a charcoal fire with bread and fish on it, and the risen Christ is cooking breakfast for the men who ran away.
Notice what Jesus does not ask Peter. He does not ask, “Will you be more reliable from now on?” He does not ask, “Can I count on you this time?” He does not hand him a schedule. He asks one question, three times:
“Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me more than these?” He said to Him, “Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.” He said to him, “Feed My lambs.”
John 21:15
The Lord knew something we forget. Commitment is not the root. Commitment is the fruit. A servant who is not committed is almost never lazy. He is usually an empty person. And you cannot command an empty well to give water.
So today I want to walk with you through three things. First, why we run dry. Second, what is really in our hands when we serve. And third, why it is better to fall under the yoke than to throw it off.
1. Why We Run Dry
Let me read you the sentence from Abouna Matta that explained my own tiredness better than anything I have heard:
«الخادم الناجح لا يتغذى من الله لأجل الآخرين، ولكنه يأخذ ويمتلئ لنفسه، وحينئذ من ملئه يعطي الآخرين … الخادم الذي يأخذ ليعطي تجده فارغاً دائماً ومجهداً»
“The successful servant does not feed on God for the sake of others. He receives and is filled for himself, and then, out of his fullness, he gives to others… The servant who takes only in order to give, you will find always empty and always exhausted.”
Al-Khidma, p. 17
Read that again in your heart. The servant who takes only in order to give is always empty.
Think about how many of us live. When do we open the Bible? Saturday night, to find a verse for Sunday’s lesson. When do we pray? For two minutes before class, so the lesson goes well. When do we read a spiritual book? When we need a story for the kids. Everything we take from God, we take for someone else. We have become pipes, not wells. And a pipe has nothing of its own. The moment the work gets hard, the pipe runs dry, and we start looking for the exit.
This is why so many good servants quit. Not because they stopped believing. Not because they are bad people. They quit because for months, sometimes years, they gave from an empty cup. Nobody can do that forever. The body says it is tired, but the truth is that the soul is hungry.
Abouna Matta says it even more simply in another place:
«الخدمة الروحية ليست مهنة تدريس بل فيض روحي، والفيض الروحي يحتاج إلى ملء مستمر»
“Spiritual service is not a teaching profession but a spiritual overflow, and overflow needs continual filling.”
Al-Khidma, p. 154
An overflow. Picture a cup under a running fountain. You never have to push water out of that cup. It spills over on its own because it is being filled faster than it can hold. That is what service is supposed to be. Not squeezing the last drop out of yourself every Sunday but standing so close to the Fountain that you cannot help spilling onto the children around you.
Now, some of you are thinking, “Abouna, the service really is heavy. I have work, grad school, family, a long drive.” I know. I do not dismiss it. But listen to how honest Abouna Matta is about the weight we feel:
«كل ثقل يتراءى لنا في نير الخدمة هو من صنع إهمالنا أو من صنع كبريائنا … فلا خلاص من ثقل النير إلا بمضاعفة الصلاة واللجوء إلى الاتضاع في الحال»
“Every heaviness we feel in the yoke of service is made by our negligence or by our pride… There is no relief from the weight of the yoke except by doubling our prayer and turning to humility at once.”
Al-Khidma, p. 52
That is a hard sentence, but it is a hopeful one. If the heaviness came from the service itself, there would be no cure. But the Lord Himself told us the truth about His yoke:
“Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
Matthew 11:29–30
If His yoke is easy and ours feels crushing, then we are carrying something He never gave us. Sometimes it is negligence: we stopped praying, stopped confessing, stopped receiving, and now we are pulling the plow on our own strength. Sometimes it is pride: we need the class to go well because it reflects on us; we are hurt when nobody thanks us; we compare ourselves with other people. Both of them make the yoke heavy. And the cure for both is the same: more prayer, and humility right away.
Abouna Matta gives a very practical minimum for a servant’s own soul. Not for the lesson. For the servant. Pray from the Agpeya three times a day: when you wake, before you sleep, and at midnight, with the Gospel open in front of you, so that reading and prayer mix together (Al-Khidma, p. 156). Keep the Church’s fasts. And do not only attend the Liturgy; pray it. He says something beautiful about this:
“The teacher seems to build his students, but in truth it is God who is building him.”
Al-Khidma, p. 159
So let me ask you plainly, and answer only to God: when was the last time you prayed for your own soul, and not to prepare a lesson? When was the last time you read the Gospel and did not ask, “How can I use this on Sunday?”
If it has been a long time, do not be ashamed. Be glad. You have just found out why you are tired. And a problem you can name is a problem God can heal.
2. Guardians of Souls, Not Teachers of Lessons
The second reason we lose our commitment is that we forget what we are holding.
If you think your job is to cover a lesson, then of course it feels optional. Someone else can cover it. There is a curriculum. There is YouTube. If I miss one Sunday, the kids will survive. But Abouna Matta will not let us think that way:
«فخادم الروح ليس هو مجرد معلم دروس بل بالدرجة الأولى مخلص نفوس»
“The servant of the spirit is not merely a teacher of lessons, but first and foremost one who saves souls.”
Al-Khidma, pp. 6–7
He is careful here. He knows only Christ saves. So he explains it in another place:
“The salvation of a human soul, though it is not the work of man, happens only through a person. The servant can never think of himself as a savior, yet he really is a channel of salvation.”
Al-Khidma, p. 54
Do you hear what that means? God has chosen not to save your students by Himself alone. He has chosen to do it through you. Saint Paul felt this so strongly that he spoke like a mother in labor:
“My little children, for whom I labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you.”
Galatians 4:19
That is service. Not delivering material. Giving birth to Christ in a child.
And then Abouna Matta says something that should make every one of us sit up:
«فالكاهن أو الخادم هو حارس غنم قبل أن يكون واعظاً أو معلماً!! ومن يده سيطلب الضائع»
“The priest or the servant is a guardian of sheep before he is a preacher or a teacher! And from his hand the lost one will be required.”
Al-Khidma, p. 73
A guardian before a teacher. The wolf, he says, does not attack the flock of a shepherd who is awake. It looks for the one who is asleep. The Lord drew the same line between the shepherd and the hired hand:
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep. But a hireling, he who is not the shepherd, one who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees; and the wolf catches the sheep and scatters them.”
John 10:11–12
Beloved, our children are surrounded by wolves you and I never had to face at their age: the phone in their pocket at two in the morning, social media, loneliness, pressure, the voices telling them faith is for old people. When a servant is sometimes there and sometimes not, a teenager learns something no lesson can undo. He learns that the Church is not really serious about him.
And here is the part that surprised me most. Abouna Matta says the children are not mainly learning from our words at all:
«الحصيلة الوحيدة التي تبقى مختزنة في أعماق الطفل … هي التي يتحصل عليها في اللاشعور، أي التي يستقبلها بوجدانه وليس بعقله!»
“The only harvest that stays stored in the depths of a child, and keeps guiding his thinking, his behavior and his faith into adulthood, is what he receives without noticing: what he takes in with his heart, not his mind!”
Al-Khidma, p. 129
He gives an example that everyone will recognize. One servant prepares a lesson on the Divine Liturgy, with a diagram, a qurbana and two candles as visual aids. It costs him an hour. Another servant does not explain the Liturgy so much as lead the child inside it, by standing next to him, by his own reverence, by the way he prays the responses and bows his head. The first, he says, gives us a young man who knows everything about the Church but is not touched by her. The second gives us a young man who lives in her (Al-Khidma, pp. 120–121).
Think of the servants you remember from your own childhood. I would guess you cannot remember one lesson they taught. But you remember them. The one who called your house when you were absent. The one who stood near you in the Liturgy. The one whose face lit up when you walked in. That is what lasted. That is what brought you back when you drifted.
So your faithfulness is not a detail of the service. Your faithfulness is the lesson. When you show up every week, on time, prayed up, and you know every child by name, you are teaching them something about God that no curriculum can teach: He does not leave. He keeps His word. He knows your name.
Two warnings from the same book, because a guardian must guard his heart too.
First, watch for favorites. Abouna Matta says that when our affection leans toward the strong, the good-looking or the easy children, “it is a serious sign that the servant is sick and needs quick healing” (Al-Khidma, p. 19). Christ went looking for the one sheep, not the ninety-nine who were easy to love.
Second, never give up on anyone. The servant, he writes, “never loses hope in anyone, right up to the moment of death, for that would mean losing hope in himself too” (Al-Khidma, p. 78). The child who never talks, the teenager who rolls his eyes, the one who stopped coming — those are exactly the ones the Good Shepherd sends you after.
3. Better to Fall Under the Yoke Than to Throw It Off
Now I want to speak to the servant who is already halfway out the door. Maybe you have told yourself, “This year I will step back.” Maybe you feel you are not good enough, not holy enough, not consistent enough. Maybe someone criticized you, and it still stings.
Abouna Matta does not pretend service is easy. He has a whole chapter called “The Taxes Owed by the Servant.” He says every true servant pays a price: tiredness, misunderstanding, criticism from the very people you serve, sometimes even from other servants. And he says the weight of the tax is a sign of how much the enemy fears what you are doing (Al-Khidma, pp. 84–89). If serving cost you nothing, it would be worth nothing. His answer to criticism is not to fight back but the answer of Saint Paul:
“Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure; being defamed, we entreat.”
1 Corinthians 4:12–13
But then he writes the line that gave this point its title. Listen to it carefully:
«ما أروع الجندي الذي يسقط في الميدان، وجروحه تنزف ويده قابضة على السلاح!»
“How splendid is the soldier who falls on the field, his wounds bleeding, and his hand still gripping his weapon!”
Al-Khidma, p. 50
And right after it:
“Never forget: God’s mercy and compassion toward you while you lie fallen under His yoke, groaning from your wounds, cannot be compared with His mercy toward you while you run away from the weight of the yoke.”
Al-Khidma, p. 50
Do you understand the comfort in that? The Lord is not looking for servants who never fall. He is looking for servants who fall under the yoke, not away from it. A tired servant who keeps showing up is more precious to Him than a talented servant who walks away. If you are weak, if you are struggling, if you feel like a hypocrite teaching what you do not fully live — stay under the yoke. That is exactly where His mercy is strongest.
And your weakness is not a disqualification. Abouna Matta says God often makes a servant a sign of His mercy through the very weakness the servant hates in himself. He puts these words on the Lord’s lips:
“It was for this very weakness that I chose you, to be a sign of My mercy.”
Al-Khidma, pp. 53–54
Look at St. Peter on that beach again. The Lord did not choose a man who had never failed. He chose the one who had failed three times, and He gave him the sheep. Saint Paul heard the same word from the Lord:
“My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.”
2 Corinthians 12:9
“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.”
2 Corinthians 4:7
But there is one more thing, and it may be the most important thing I say tonight. Service is not only a yoke. It is a joy. Abouna Matta ends the second part of his book with a chapter called “The Joys of the Servant,” and he begins it with Saint John the Baptist:
“He who has the bride is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease.”
John 3:29–30
The servant is the friend of the Bridegroom. Every child you bring closer to Christ is a soul being escorted to a wedding. And Abouna Matta asks a wonderful question: have you ever seen a family walk a bride to her groom while weeping and beating their chests? So how can a servant explain salvation with a frown? (Al-Khidma, pp. 92–93). He says:
«إن قوة الكاهن في كرازته وقوة الخادم في تعليمه هي فرحه بالعريس»
“The priest’s power in preaching and the servant’s power in teaching is his joy in the Bridegroom.”
Al-Khidma, p. 92
Your power with the children is not your knowledge. It is your joy. They will forget your outline. They will never forget that you were happy to be with them, and happy to be with Christ.
And think of the reward. The Lord said:
“I say to you that likewise there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance.”
Luke 15:7
When one teenager in your class comes back to confession, when one child starts to pray on his own, heaven throws a feast, and you were invited to help cause it. Where else in your week can you do something that makes the angels rejoice?
Abouna Matta warns us that service itself must never become the goal. The goal is higher: love, given freely, with nothing gained for ourselves (Al-Khidma, p. 145). When we serve to be seen, to be thanked, or to feel important, it becomes a trade, and a trade always ends when the profit stops. But when we serve because we love Him, the profit never stops, because He never stops being worth it.
That brings us back to the beach. “Do you love Me?” “Yes, Lord.” “Then feed My sheep.”
Conclusion
My beloved servants, St. Peter left that beach a different man. The same man who had denied the Lord before a servant girl would one day stand before the rulers of Jerusalem and say, “We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). What changed him was not a new rule or a better schedule. It was love, restored at a charcoal fire, and the words that ended that conversation: “Follow Me” (John 21:19).
That is my prayer for every one of you. Not that you would feel guilty enough to show up, but that you would be loved enough to overflow. Go back to the Fountain. Sit at His feet before you stand in front of a class. Let Him fill you for your own sake, and you will find that you cannot keep it to yourself.
The children do not need perfect servants. They need full ones. They need to see in your face that Christ is real, that He is joyful, and that He does not leave.
So do not measure your service by how much you have left to give. Measure it by how close you stay to the One who gives.
Do you love Him? Then come and be filled — until your life is filled to overflow, and it spills onto every child He has placed in your hands.
Let us pray.
O Lord Jesus Christ, who stood on the shore and asked Peter, “Do you love Me?”, ask us too, and give us the grace to answer You with our lives. Forgive us for every Sunday we came empty, and for every child we let slip away. Fill us first with Yourself, in prayer, in Your Word, and in Your holy Mysteries, so that we may overflow with Your love onto the lambs You have entrusted to us. Make us guardians who do not sleep, servants who do not flee, and friends of the Bridegroom who rejoice in Your voice. Amen.
Final Blessing
May the Lord bless us and transform us — that our homes may stand on the Rock, our hands may serve in the harvest, and our hearts may long for Heaven. Through the intercession of our Lady, the Theotokos Saint Mary, and the prayers of Saint Peter and Saint Andrew. Glory be to God forever. Amen.
Source note: Quotations from Fr. Matta El-Meskeen are from Al-Khidma (Service), three parts in one volume, St. Macarius Monastery Press, 13th printing 2018. Page numbers are those of the PDF copy used; English renderings are working translations. Scripture is from the NKJV.
Slides
Prepared and presented by Hegumen Fr. Andrew Awad, D.Min.