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December 14 is the anniversary of my ordination as a priest in the Episcopal Church. I can remember the day like it was yesterday. Just before the ordination, friends and family gathered and ate Chinese food at one of the best restaurants in Wilmington. My son was just under a year old, and I bounced him on my knee as I contemplated the life of service I was being thrust into. He laughed and squealed in delight, unaware that something was about to happen that would change our lives forever.

Being ordained can sometimes feel like a burden. Not a bad burden, but a weighty burden nevertheless. To be ordained as a Christian priest is to be publicly set apart as a servant, someone who spends themselves for the sake of others. Jesus Christ came to serve humanity, not to be served by us. So, it makes sense that those who minister in his name would be servants too.

Sadly, there are numerous instances of misbehaving clergy whose lives look nothing like the man from Nazareth. They’re the outliers, the ones who didn’t get it right. I don’t get it right all the time, but I can tell you that one of the great joys of being a priest is that I get to look at myself in the mirror at the end of the day and know that I did at least one good thing for someone else. I made a difference.

You don’t need to be a priest to make a difference. You don’t even need to be religious to make a difference. For almost two years, I was a hospital chaplain at two major trauma centers. I saw all sorts of medical staff who modeled a life of service far more profoundly than mine. To see certified nursing assistants cleaning incontinent patients over and over again is to see profound human love on display. To watch nurses use skill and wisdom to keep a patient breathing is to see a love supreme.

Servants are all around us. Everywhere we go, we are in the presence of people who model the best humanity has to offer. Quite often, these servants do their good work quietly and out of the spotlight. They don’t want any praise. But, my friends, people like that deserve our praise and thanks.

“No man is an island, entire of itself, every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main,” wrote the poet John Donne. And how true it is! Nobody’s life is sustained by themselves alone. We live in an interconnected web sustained and supported by people who have chosen to love others more than themselves. And we are the richer for it.

You could be one of those servants, choosing to love those around you more than you love yourself. You could be a cheerleader, offering profound and exaggerated love and appreciation to those whose lives of service make your life possible.

In this holy and magical season, make a two-fold resolution: to love your neighbor as yourself and to thank your neighbor when they love you. You don’t need to be a priest or a nurse to be of service to your neighbor. All you must do is choose to love others with a love supreme. That’s it. Won’t you do it?

Chris Adams is the Rector at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Washington.