{"id":6564,"date":"2020-07-14T21:19:36","date_gmt":"2020-07-14T11:19:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/?p=6564"},"modified":"2020-07-14T21:25:48","modified_gmt":"2020-07-14T11:25:48","slug":"celebration-of-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/celebration-of-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebration of Service"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\"><strong>Celebration of Service<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p> <em>Adapted from a sermon by<\/em> <strong><em>Michael Iskander<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Nowadays, we put so much effort into our jobs, our social\nlife, our hobbies, our everyday mundane tasks. These may provide us with some\nsort of fulfilment or joy temporarily, however, once we have achieved that\ngoal, that friendship, received that new promotion, we are constantly faced\nwith the same question. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>What next?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What do we do now, what is there to do, what else can give\nme a sense of fulfilment. This too can be said when it comes to death. We may\ngrow old and pass away, but then what next? What happens afterwards?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The feast of the apostles has just passed, a day full of\ncelebration and joy. But what exactly is being celebrated? This is the day we\ncommemorate the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul. Yet within the Church we\nsing joyful praises, there is a lively and jubilant aroma that fills the\nChurch. Usually we associate death with mourning and despair. However, as\nChristians, we should in fact join the Church in these celebrations, since we\nknow that due to Christ\u2019s blood, we have so much more once we pass away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We also celebrate this day as the apostles are the spreaders of the Gospel. They have seen Christ\u2019s teachings and continued to preach them to both Jews and Gentiles to allow for our Church to still be standing today, and hence we celebrate them. Similarly, we also bear the same responsibility as them to ensure that we keep true to the doctrine of the Church to ensure Her longevity till His Second Coming. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Therefore, since we celebrate the apostles, we must also aim\nto serve they did to others. We are not only called to serve Christ, but to\nserve others also. We read in Matthew 25 that,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>\u201cAssuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.\u201d<\/em> Matthew 25:40 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Thus, in order to truly serve Christ, we must first serve\nthose of the world, just as the apostles whom we celebrate, spreading the good\nnews that is Christ. If we truly desire genuine fulfilment in our everyday\nlives, service is the only answer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Celebration of Service Adapted from a sermon by Michael Iskander Nowadays, we put so much effort into our jobs, our social life, our hobbies, our everyday mundane tasks. These may provide us with some sort of fulfilment or joy temporarily, however, once we have achieved that goal, that friendship, received that new promotion, we are &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/celebration-of-service\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Celebration of Service&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6567,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,24,191,60,374,373],"class_list":["post-6564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-apostles","tag-christ","tag-feast","tag-service","tag-st-paul","tag-st-peter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6564"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6569,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6564\/revisions\/6569"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stmark.com.au\/Blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}