I suppose that there are some Pastors who would try to answer this question. I can’t bring myself to do that. If an employee came to me and asked, “Hey boss, what’s the least I have to do to avoid getting fired?” I might just fire them on the spot. If my wife came to me and said, “Honey, what’s the least I have to do to make sure that you won’t divorce me?” I probably would have something to say that just might lead to that divorce.
If a Christian person is contemplating the least that they have to do in order to get to heaven, I somehow doubt that they will be happy with the heaven that they wind up getting to. I suppose that, as a priest I should quote some scripture here. All that I can think of at the moment is a quote from last week’s Gospel: “Strive to enter by the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.” I think that the most important word in that verse is Strive.
My seminary friend who was recently made the Missionary Bishop of Mahajanga, Madagascar has spent the last 90 days taking a tour of his new diocese. For three months, Bishop Darryl has journeyed through his diocese and met the people, and visited his parishes, schools, orphanages, and missions. He has prayed with and for his people and travelled non-stop. He has learned much about what they have and what they do not have. He has been bitten by various insects and had to deal with numerous hardships. Recently he met with an immigration official who told him that he had to leave Madagascar since his visa was not for work purposes, but was a tourist visa. Regardless, his visa was up and he had to leave to go back to Canada. He was back home for a very few hours before he and his wife boarded an airplane along with 20 close parish friends and went to Guatemala on a mission trip. As I read about this story I asked myself what is the difference between what he was doing in Madagascar and what he is doing in Guatemala. What makes one of those trips work and one of them vacation?
I remember a trip that I took several years ago to hunt Elk in Western Colorado. It was a vacation for me. I climbed to make camp at just over 10,000 feet in elevation. I was up at 4:00am every day. I walked several miles every day, both as I prepared to hunt and during the actual hunt. I shot a big bull elk about 600 yards up the mountain from the camp. If you wonder how big an elk is, look in your local cow pasture, because that’s pretty close. I had to transport 1000 pounds of elk down the mountain to camp, hang it, butcher it and haul it off the mountain one backpack load at a time. I have never worked so hard in all of my life. But I would never call that work. It was recreation. It was a joy. It was fun. It was the hardest thing I have ever done, but it was not work. It was a labor of love.
What Bishop Darryl is doing is a labor of Love. On both accounts. For 20 years he has led the people of his parish in Newfoundland to take on missionary work in Guatemala. They have built a school and a hospital in a small community there. And they do it because of love. My friend Darryl has taken on a Missionary Diocese in one of the poorest countries in the world because he has a heart for it, not because he gets paid for it. Yes, Darryl gets paid, his family has to eat and have a roof over their heads, but he does the work for love, not for money. He would never ask the question, “What is the least I have to do…” when it comes to his missionary work. Darryl is not concerned with anything having to do with the least. What Darryl is concerned with is, “How can I help? What can I do?”