Educating for Service

This book gathers a selection of articles, speeches, and homilies by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini. The title "Educating for Service" reflects the principle guiding the choice of texts. They speak to the conscience of people of good will who, at every level of public administration, carry the difficult task of understanding and weighing the reality of contemporary humanity and meeting its needs—especially those of the most vulnerable, whose necessities today's society recognizes as urgent but does not always manage to address through concrete works of charity and justice. These are forceful and illuminating words about the commitment of public servants and those who work in care and volunteering, as well as about the rights and ethics of labor. The ethical problem, he writes, "springs from the simultaneous existence of two radically different and essentially opposed realities: the force of power, a factual force that pushes private interest to prevail; and the force of reason and justice, an ideal force, the aspiration to a shared life in which each person is respected and loved for who he is, impartially, according to his intrinsic dignity." The author calls all of us to think, to take responsibility, to act—and to keep acting despite every disappointment, discouragement, and hardship. "Yet it is a labor also joyful, full of enthusiasm," he says, "the joy of discovering God's truth in the folds of human circumstance." - N.L.