“Faith leads to service”

Alberto is a university student in Argentina. His faith in Christ leads him to ask: “What can I do for others?” The 3rd video in the "What faith means when you’re 20" series.

For me, living my faith means doing everything in God’s presence: whether I’m making pizzas for some friends, or playing soccer, or studying…all the time.

A specific way of living my faith for others is striving to be a consistent Christian right where I am at the moment. So I begin my day spending some time in prayer, and on Sundays, since I’m a Catholic, I go to Mass. Then, I try to behave well in my soccer match even though sometimes I make a mistake and get angry at the referee. And if I do make a mistake I try to begin again. In everything I do, I try to have a unity of life.

"I strive to serve my friends in many different ways."

I strive to serve my friends in many different ways. Obviously, this requires effort on my part. Sometimes they do me a favor and sometimes I’m the one who serves them.

Right now we’re making pizzas for some friends who are coming over tonight. I’m thinking of the good time they’ll have, that we’ll all have. The sacrifice of spending hours rolling dough is worth it, because your friends appreciate it a lot and have a great time.

Sometimes it happens that when you go to a friend’s house everyone’s cleaning up the table after the meal and you of course get up right away to help, and everyone says to you: “Hey, how great, how good you are.” But later when you’re back home, in your daily life, you find it hard to help clean up the table. Well in those things too, which might be the ones that require the greatest effort, I have to struggle to do them well.

"Some friends and I decided to visit people who are sick or lonely, living in a nursing home."

Service is always made a reality in deeds, right? Because sometimes we want to, but we don’t know who to serve. A while ago, inspired by St. Josemaría’s words, some friends and I decided to visit people who are sick or lonely, living in a nursing home. This is helping us a lot because it’s a specific way to help people every weekend, or every two weeks. We go to visit them and ask them how they are; we tell them joyful incidents from our own life and ask them how they are doing, what they are reading, if they are happy or not…. It’s a specific way of serving others as Jesus would serve them.

Related links