Homily for the Week of September 1, 2013

Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2013
Si 3:17, 20, 28-29
Heb 12:18-19
Lk 14:7-14


This Labor Day weekend many of you will be sharing meals or barbecues or gatherings with your family and friends. In fact, many of you have used the summer evenings to do the same. Meals with others are important social events, but they can be very important spiritual events. For instance the gathering of family and friends after a funeral Mass and burial helps us to remember and share stories of our loved one for whom we have just prayed in Church. These events do not have a guest list. All are invited.


In the Gospel of Luke from which I just read he tells a lot of stories about Jesus eating at a lot of meals. There are more references to eating, banquets and reclining at tables in Luke than in the other Gospels. Being at table serves as the key locus for Jesus’ teaching and as a place for telling some stories. Jesus uses meal time as a principal site for fellowship and discourse. It was at a meal and sitting around a table where Jesus gave us our First Holy Communion known as Jesus’ last supper before he died on Good Friday. Fellowship at communal meals becomes the principal place for worship and that we seek to be at the heavenly banquet.


The scene which is described today is a typical Sabbath meal. Like many of our own Sunday dinners, it is an opportunity to invite family and friends to gather. People still gather after church to eat the main Sunday meal. While our family meals do not usually assigned persons to sit at a particular place, in many cases habit and tradition still has certain chairs for certain members of the family except for major receptions such as for weddings where you may find your name on a particular table. Most often table assignments are designed to make people comfortable and to encourage conversation.

But that was not the case with meals in the world of Jesus. Meals 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. How closely a person was seated near the host revealed how the host perceived you. Where people sat at a table were carefully figured out depending on a person’s age, public position, education, wealth and so forth. All of these conferred on a person the right to be seated in a prominent places. Even today we often do something similar especially at important meals. We will seat certain people at the ''head table'' or seat a person ''with the family.''


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 banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind. At the time of Jesus such persons might have a handicapping condition. None of these would have been invited into homes to eat because the Pharisees believed a handicapping condition was evidence of a sinful life. These persons were not considered equal.


All of our readings today are about humility or being humble. This isn't something we like to hear about. How many of us can honestly call ourselves humble? We get the word Humility from the Latin word for ground. Most of you remember Pope John Paul II who died a few years ago. During his time as Pope he travelled throughout the world. Many times he would participate in youth gatherings as he did once in Toronto and in Detroit. At all of these events once he got off the Alitalia Airlines air plane he would kneel on the ground and kiss the ground. This was done as a sign to those he came to visit that he was their humble servant.


Humility, especially as mentioned in the Bible, is not false modesty. True humility is being able to accept our limits, to have a true sense of ourself, of what our place is in society. Being humble is not an excuse for refusing to do certain things because we're either too lazy, too self-centered, or too fearful to do things. 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. And God does not make junk.


The opposite of humility is Pride. There is a saying that has been around for ages that says: Pride is the root of all evils. Pride so often destroys human relationships. Pride was considered the sin of the fallen angels, and the sin of Adam and Eve. Pride is placing ourselves before anyone else. The proud person knows it all. The proud person likes to tell every what to do. The proud person has the answer to every problem, but refuses to see another persons viewpoint. Pride prevents us from knowing or accepting the truth about ourselves. The proud person centers on what is there in this for me; the humble person centers on others. True humility allows us to take honors, to receive awards and trophies as outstanding athlete or student, to receive the Purple Hearts and Medals of Honor -- all of which are ways that God has allowed us to help someone else.


This is healthy pride where we are honest about the gifts God has given us such as good health, maybe a good mind and education.We recognize that these come from God. Unhealthy pride tries to convince us that we are much better in some ways than we really are. We are convinced that we do not need to give God much attention. This causes us to look down on others.


Likewise true humility is when we know ourselves and we honestly depend on God. False humility is like the people in today’s Bible reading. We are waiting for someone to tell us move up higher. Humility is the attitude we are to bring to the table of the Lord.