Homily for the week of August 29, 2010

Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2010

Si 3:17, 20, 28-29

Heb 12:18-19

Lk 14:7-14

There is a saying that Pride is the cause of all evil. Pride is having an improper appreciation of or our own worth. It is believing that we are better than others, and always wanting to be noticed. It is one of the 7 capital sins. Although it is good to take pride in ones work or accomplishments. Our Bible readings today are about humility or being humble, which is the opposite of the sin of pride. Humility is one of the most difficult of virtues both to attain and to ascertain. With the Bible readings I want to reflect with you today how we can be more humble persons. Our first reading from the book of Sirach is very short but very direct. It tells us if we conduct our affairs with humility God will will find favor with God.

The word humility comes from the Latin word humilis, which means literally “on the ground,” or earth. So when we are advised to “humble yourself,” this is an invitation to be “grounded,” to be attentive to our connectedness with Earth. This involves as well our consciousness to be connected with all persons and all Earth’s creatures and with God. Sirach says that in humbling oneself one finds favor with God. In other words, through humility we gain proper consciousness of our place in relation to God.

But that was not the case with meals in the world of Jesus. They were surrounded and imbedded with many strict conventions. Many things were revealed by meals and the list of those invited.

Normally you would invite only people of equal social rank to come to your home for a meal. You could invite someone of a slightly higher social rank into your home, and if that person accepted, everyone would think that you had taken a ''step up'' in social rank. If you accepted a person's invitation, you were expected to return the invitation. To not return the invitation was a terrible rejection, but if your important guest did reciprocate, you ''had arrived.''

Where people sat at a meal was also an important decision. How closely a person was seated near the host revealed how the host perceived you. To be invited was already an honor, but once you arrived, where you were seated established yet another social rank. Even today we often do something similar especially at important meals such as for a wedding reception, or political banquet. We will seat certain people at the ''head table'' or seat a person ''with the family.'' With instant TV news reporting today every day we see examples of this seating at White House dinners.

This ranking system at meals is important for us to know about because Jesus' observations in the Gospel passage today make sense only in this context. Jesus noticed that some people were finding for themselves the best places at the table. He tells them that is not a good idea. It is better to be honored by being invited to the best place rather than simply taking the best place. But more importantly Jesus also says that when you hold a lunch or dinner, do not invite your friends or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors, rather invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind. . . . None of these would have been invited into homes to eat because the Pharisees at the time of Jesus believed that all these persons were not equal to them. T

But Jesus’ focus was not, in the end, on seating arrangements at dinner, His primary concern was not social etiquette, but humility in the face of divine judgement and the Last Day. He was really referring to heaven where all of us will be seated together. The clear implication is that the if we want to get to heaven we must not be self-seeking and prideful.

True humility comes from recognizing who we are in relation to God. Humility includes realizing the fragile and temporal nature of our lives here and now. It means recognizing the limits of our abilities and knowledge. The dominant secular culture says otherwise; it seeks in countless ways to push beyond the boundaries of morality, natural law and divine revelation — as if such madness will lead to anything but disaster and spiritual destitution.

It is easy to fall prey to false humility, pretending to take a lowly place in the hopes of receiving adulation and an invitation to come up higher. Or false humility can be manifest in persons whose self-esteem has never developed properly. True humility is grounded in earthy wisdom, a knowledge that all persons, no matter their circumstances, and all the created world share in an unbreakable interconnection of life given by God. We are equally loved and esteemed by the Holy One who desires the flourishing of all.

True humility is being able to accept our limits, to have a true sense of ourselves, of what our place is in society. Being humble does not mean putting yourself down, or deliberately thinking that you are the worst of all persons. Our Catholic religion says we are all made in God's image. True humility allows us to take honors, to receive awards and trophies as outstanding athlete or student or citizen, all of which are ways that God has allowed us to help someone else.

Each week you and I are invited to this table on which is placed the spiritual food of Jesus. We come here today with all of our differences: all ages, all ways of life, different levels of faith and spirituality; in physical strength and health. In fact we are each different from one another in very many different ways. But we are the same in one important way: we are all the same believing that this is Jesus and we are welcomed to this table. We are here in this place right now, because God has invited us to be close to him. Before you leave the church today say to yourself a short thank you prayer to God for his invitation.