Usefulness to others

SUMMARY: Being useful to others is the most beautiful human work, as stated by Sophocles and validated by Christians. This virtue is rooted in love and the ministry of Jesus, who focused on helping the needy and the suffering. Christian virtue involves walking with the weak and offering ourselves to others. However, we must be cautious and minister with love, not judgment, in order to be useful to others. Each brother or sister who asks for advice is an opportunity to show our Christian side and edify ourselves. The Lion of Judah Congregation Site and its devotional space "God speaks today" should be a place for all of us to meet, pray, and minister to each other. We must bear witness to the victory that Christ gave us and encourage others.

Four hundred years before our Lord was born, the famous tragic poet and playwright Sophocles of Greece once said: "the most beautiful human work is that of being useful to others." We Christians know that he was right. It is a statement that validates until today our way of perceiving and acting in the world that we have had to live hand in hand with our creator. There is no joy that resembles another when we can be useful to our neighbor, to the believer, as brother or sister, for edification and exhortation; to the unbeliever for testimony. The ministry of Jesus was focused in that direction. Bread to the hungry, healing to the sick, consolation to the weeping, blessings to the poor in spirit, freedom to the captive of sin. The wonder-worker turned his back so that the world would unload its sorrows and misfortunes on him. But the world did not know him. Even today, almost two-thirds of the world's population ignore or reject him.

Being useful to others has to do with love, it has to do with the supreme commandment that Jesus left us to all his disciples. I see the usefulness of Christian virtue when human solidarity overflows to do good without expecting anything in return, when we understand the misery of others and make it our own and, out of love, we share the loaves and fishes of God's provision to touch less misery each and make the burdens bearable. Christian virtue, understood as justice and integrity in “the one who brought us into his admirable light”, is to walk embracing the weak so that they do not fall, circumcising (cutting off the roots) our inner ego to offer ourselves to others.