Iron & Altar

"When you have done all you have been commanded, say, 'We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we were obliged to do.'" - Luke 17:10

A servant comes in from plowing the field, and instead of being invited to sit and eat, he's told to put on an apron and serve his master's meal first, then eat afterward himself. Jesus doesn't soften this. He asks whether the master thanks the servant for doing what he was told, and answers his own question: he does not. The servant did his job. Nothing more is owed him for it.

That's a hard word for a man who's spent a career being praised for competence, brother, but it's the corrective a steward needs before his own account comes due. Doing what you were obliged to do is not a credential. It's the baseline. Today the Church remembers Leo the Great, who in 452 rode out to meet Attila the Hun at the Mincio River, alone in every way that mattered, and talked an army back from Rome with nothing but his own words. History does not record him claiming credit for it afterward. He returned to Rome and kept doing the next obliged thing.

Titus's first reading gives the positive form of the same instruction: older men are to be temperate, dignified, sound in faith, in love, in endurance. Not spectacular. Sound. A steward's job most days looks exactly like that - the unprofitable, uncelebrated, entirely necessary work of simply doing what he was obliged to do, one more time.

Do one obligation this week - a real one, unglamorous - without telling anyone you did it and without expecting thanks for it. Notice what that costs you.

Lord, I have wanted credit for doing what I was only obliged to do. Teach me to say, honestly, that I am an unprofitable servant, and to keep serving anyway. Amen.