blessed, broken, given

​Benedixit, fregit, deditque.  Blessed, broken, given.  These notions, if not the very words themselves, form the heart of the Eucharist, or what some ecclesial traditions refer to as Holy Communion.  They are very much on my mind at the start of this new school year as we welcome international students to (or, for returning students, back to) university campuses all over America and beyond.    

With the most recent New Staff Orientation behind us, I’m constantly impressed and amazed by—and very grateful to God for—the quality of the incoming staff to ISI.  Indeed, my sense of awe only increases and deepens when I survey our quite incredible team of full-time staff and ministry representatives, whether you’ve been in the business for decades or just a few short years.  I’m humbled by the thought that you folks, who could’ve easily found fame and fortune anywhere, have chosen instead to respond to the Lord’s call to international student ministry.  

And the work you do with your students—and, just as importantly, your ministry to your team of volunteers, donors, and supporters—can really be described by the 3 words above.  I see the many ways through which you love and serve your students as well as the folks serving alongside you in the ministry, and how you willingly give of yourselves in order that others may receive.  Then I think: blessed, broken, given.  

I’m reminded of Jesus’ miraculous feeding of a hungry horde numbering in the thousands—tens of thousands, if we include women and children—on a Galilean hillside.  “Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves.  Then he gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the people” (Matthew 14:19 NIV).  This verse can be sliced and diced so many ways!  

On the one hand, we count ourselves among the disciples who partner with Christ in the blessing, breaking, and serving of the loaves to our charges.  Following the example of our Lord, we look up to our Father in heaven, we give thanks, we break what we have in hand, and we dish it out.  And as I discovered nearly two decades ago in a decrepit village on the border between Myanmar and Thailand—distributing care packages to a long line of children numbering way more than what I had in my duffel bag—the Lord truly multiplies what little we have when we give it out in His Name!  

On the other hand, we are equally the loaves that are blessed, broken, and given, aren’t we?  And yet God, who breaks and serves us up to the physically and spiritually hungry, has shown us the way it is done.  “While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, ‘Take and eat; this is my body’” (Matthew 26:26 NIV).  Jesus, the Bread of Life, offered Himself as a living sacrifice—holy, pleasing, and acceptable to the Father (Matthew 6:11; Romans 12:1).  Likewise, the way you give of yourselves, again and again, to your students—are you not also, in a very real sense, the body of Christ that is blessed, broken, and given?  

Those three words also served as the motto of the late Swiss theologian and Catholic priest, Hans Urs von Balthasar.  For Balthasar, the call of God was not an option that one picks from several available possibilities, but rather a siren call that draws us inexorably—even if only kicking and screaming, as C.S. Lewis might put it—into God’s presence and purposes.  “You have nothing to choose; you are called,” as Balthasar once wrote.  “You will not serve; another will use you.  You have no plans to make; you are only a small little tile in a mosaic that has long been ready.  I needed only to ‘leave everything and follow,’ without making plans, without wishes or ideas: I needed only to stand there and wait and see what I would be used for—and so it happened.”  And so too our call to be blessed, broken, and given by and for God. 

Thank you, dear sisters and brothers, for modeling Christ through dying to self and living to love and serve.  Benedixit, fregit, deditque!