Homily for Sunday, 1 September 2019

Readings of the day: Sirach 3:17-18; Psalm 68:4-5, 6-7, 10-11; Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24a; Luke 14:1, 7-14

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

This homily was given at Our Lady of Sorrows Parish, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

What is humility? Is it possible to be confident yet still humble? In 1980, Mac Davis began his song with the sassy lyrics, “O Lord, it’s hard to be humble.” But none of us (including, I dare say, Mac Davis, despite the second tongue-in-cheek line of his song) have the luxury of being “perfect in every way.” So what exactly is humility?

Our readings today from the Book of Sirach and Luke’s Gospel prize the virtue of humility. What other virtues go together with humility, or could help us to understand what humility is and to practice it? Sirach plays on the apparent paradox between humility and greatness; being “lofty and renowned” yet humble. Even the Lord himself, Sirach says, is mighty, “but by the humble he is glorified.”

Do we often think of God as humble, or glorified especially when we are humble? Sirach goes on to connect humility with intelligence, attentiveness, and wisdom. How are humility, intelligence, attentiveness, and wisdom interconnected? Imagine this: Have we ever consulted an expert on something we knew little about? Have we ever taken time to ask an expert or a teacher questions, and then listen and dialogue for the sheer joy of broadening or deepening our knowledge? How many of us have listened to somebody in a difficult situation in life, or cared for somebody vulnerable or in need in any one of a variety of ways?

I have limited experience with monastic religious orders, but the sixth-century Rule of St. Benedict, on which the Rules of many religious orders, in and outside of monasteries, have been based, begins with a very important verb: “Listen.” St. Benedict considered attentive listening, inclination “of the heart,” to be critical to the community life among the monks under his guidance; their rhythm of work and prayer for which Benedictines are known. The abbot of the Benedictine Monastery of Christ in the Desert in New Mexico reflects on the reading we hear from Sirach today about how wisdom is connected to attentive listening. “Wisdom is not an intellectual activity,” the abbot says. “No, it is the gift of knowing how to live well in every situation while maintaining our deepest values.” And to discern what is most true, what is right, what “our deepest values” should be “in every situation”; to encounter God “in every situation” means to know “how to keep still and keep silence.” The abbot of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert suggests that, “as a practical spiritual exercise, today we might try to be still and silent and just listen to others and see what that listening does to us interiorly.”

How many of us have experienced that, the more attentively we listen or care for another person, interiorly we absorb the needs or concerns of the other person. Our needs, in the moment, often become secondary to those of the other person. It is in these situations when I have been the most at peace in ministry as a priest, when ministry is least about me and most about the other and about encountering God in the other person. These experiences of encounter with God in and through another person are made possible by attentive listening. These experiences also require humility: Ministry; listening attentively is not about me first but about another person, and ultimately about God first.

Humility, then, is the key to “our deepest values”; the key to relationship with our God who is mighty, “but by the humble he is glorified.” So humility has nothing to do with a lack of self-confidence or downplaying our natural talents. Our talents, after all, are from God. But, paradoxically, the more naturally talented or intelligent we are, the wiser we will be the more we can be still and listen, when caring for another person; when we are at prayer, especially for the needs of others. So wisdom, far from “an intellectual activity,” is a virtue, the twin virtue of humility, which is at its greatest when we listen for and attentively seek the Lord’s presence in others, because, again paradoxically, the mightier God is, the humbler God is. And the same is true of God as of us. For God, not God’s greatest might for might’s sake but our best interest, our salvation, is God’s greatest glory.

Jesus’ parable we hear today gives us another image of what humility is about. For Sirach, wisdom and humility are about the encounter with God through attentive listening and care for others. For Jesus, humility is to leave the position of greatest social status to another. The images of humility that Sirach and Jesus, through Luke’s Gospel, offer us today are complementary. Who among us has heard it said that human beings are both sacred and social? Sirach focuses more on the sacred dimension of human nature; Jesus in Luke’s Gospel today focuses more on our social dimension, but these two dimensions of our human nature go together.

Jesus was probably no stranger to being invited to dine with the social elites of his time. Today’s Gospel reading finds Jesus invited “to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the Sabbath.” Presuming that, at this meal with the leading Pharisee, Jesus was a respected guest (since our Gospel reading does not say otherwise), can we not easily imagine Jesus’ host offering Jesus himself the place of honour at table? How would Jesus act in this situation? Would he not have acted as he teaches in his parable, taking “the lowest place” and waiting for his host to invite him up to a place of higher status?

In any case. Jesus turns social convention on its head with his parable we hear today through Luke. Take “the lowest place” at table and wait to be invited “up higher,” Jesus says. “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters or your relatives or rich neighbours,” but first “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind,” those who cannot repay your act of kindness and humility.

In truth, this would neither be the first nor the last time Jesus would take the place of least status. The meal we hear about today would be the last time in Luke’s Gospel when Jesus would dine in a Pharisee’s home; the last time he would maybe have been offered the place of highest status at table. But Jesus was born into this world in the humblest place, a manger in Bethlehem. And he would again take the humblest, indeed the most humiliating place, on a cross, where he would die for us. This act of utmost humility is our only way to salvation. And, as a sign of this promise to us of salvation, the exalted place with God that awaits us to the extent we humble ourselves, Jesus would be raised from the dead, but he had to die on a cross first.

He had to, many times during his life, turn our social conventions of status and prestige on their head. “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” It will forever be hard for us “to be humble”; humility is a difficult virtue to define, much less to practice. Yet Jesus proposes what the wisdom of people like Sirach did for centuries before him, and what holy people inspired by Jesus have proposed since: Humility, intentionally placing others and ultimately God first, especially those who are the most in need, the most vulnerable, or the least reputed socially; listening attentively to the needs of others, is key to living up to our God-given human nature, both sacred and social.

We have already been created in God’s image and likeness. There can be no place of greater status than this; no greater prestige our world can offer. The measure to which we are humble, inspiring others by our words and actions to know how much dignity they have before God as creatures in God’s image and likeness, is the measure to which we will be exalted. We will know everlasting communion with our God, who is mighty and glorious beyond our comprehension precisely because he is humble. Indeed, our God is the source of the humility by which we will be saved.