Homily for Tuesday, 4 November 2014– Memorial of St. Charles Borromeo

Tuesday of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Philippians 2:5-11; Psalm 22:26b-27, 28-30ab, 30e, 31-32; Luke 14:15-24

What is humility? Imagine this: Who here, if we had the chance, would like to be God? I think that to be God, even for a short time, would be superb! Just think: If one of us were God, we would know everything; be all-powerful; could create things from nothing… Who would not want this?

Would there not be temptation to abuse this knowledge, power, and creativity if we were God, though? Would we be tempted not to be humble? When I was a seminarian and children’s catechist at St. Basil’s Church in Toronto, I would often ask the children to place themselves in the Bible stories we would discuss in sacramental preparation. The children could be anybody they wanted to be in these Bible stories except Jesus or God. I thought that this would avoid the temptation against humility associated with wanting to be God.

One year, an astute teenager I had preparing for confirmation questioned me on my rule: Why can we not be God, if we imagine God as humble? The boy’s question is still one of my favorite questions I have ever been asked.

Today’s readings show God as humble. St. Paul uses what was probably a well-known hymn among the earliest Christians to emphasize the humility of God made human in Jesus Christ. The core of this hymn is a verse borrowed from Isaiah: “To me every knee shall bend; by me every tongue shall swear.” In Isaiah, this verse stresses the power and oneness of God. St. Paul and the early Christians still understood God as one, although in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But now this verse from Isaiah, as the centerpiece of the hymn in St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians, emphasizes God as humble.

Our God made himself like us in all but sin in Jesus Christ. Jesus “did not regard equality with God something to be grasped,” but instead became “obedient to death, even death on a cross.” This is the ultimate humility; one St. Paul invites us to emulate.

This “same attitude” as Jesus Christ that St. Paul asks us to have is one of humility. It is an attitude that seeks out, as in our Gospel reading, not primarily the people who could repay our kindness; the rich; those who participate faithfully and frequently in the Mass and other sacraments, but “the poor and the crippled, the blind and the lame”; those out in the “highways and hedgerows”; the broken; the lost… To seek these people out is a Godly act; a Christ-like act; an act of humility.

Who would we be, then, if we were to be anyone we wished in today’s readings? Because of St. Paul and the boy in my confirmation preparation class at St. Basil’s, I have decided to relax my own rule. I encourage all of us to be God, or at least like God; not all-powerful or all-knowing (we cannot match God’s power or knowledge), but humble as God is humble.