Serving Humanity

The Nursing Home Lions (NHL) is a team of volunteers who visit the Nursing home to bring communion once each month. We have three homes to visit.) Today the NHL from St. Mark’s by the Lake Visited Extendicare in Tecumseh. It was a banner day for the NHL. There were eight of us attending the Mass at the home and it was indeed a very good day for the residents and for us visitors. I reflected today that it is fair to say that I see the face and eyes of Jesus each time I visit the home. I see Christ in the brokenness and in the joy. I see Christ in the residents and in the staff. I see Christ at work in the relationships and it does my heart good to see Christ so abundantly present in the lives of the seniors.

Many thanks to Jason Burgoin, and Lisa Morel, Catherinanne George and Carrie Webb for making your visits today. More than meaning a lot to us NHLers it means a tremendous amount to the Residents of the home. In our effort to be present we see the presence of the One who commissions us to go and heal and love and forgive. In our effort to be present, we feel the presence of Love personified in service.

Leo Tolstoy said, “The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity.” We all have the capacity to do just that. Let us all pray and discern what act of service we can offer to humanity, to brothers and sisters that we know and those that we do not know.  Let us all reflect on finding those around us who live with hurt, pain, loneliness, rejection,  judgment, sorrow, poverty, or any other demoralizing force, and let us seek to serve them – even if it only means being there, being present, listening, watching, caring, praying. Let us serve by finding simple ways to make another’s journey easier, another’s burden lighter.

Thank you Monica, Rose Marie, Gloria, Marian and our newcomers named above as well as all you NHLers who have come to the Home for church in the past. Thank you for serving humanity. You are doing the work of fulfilling the sole meaning of life!