Today's Gospel is taken from the Gospel of Saint Luke, Chapter 14, where our Lord is
dining at the house of Pharisee, and he notices how quick people were to take the places of
honor at the table.
Many commentators note that Jesus here is teaching us a lesson in humility, how we are
to take the lower places when we're invited to special gatherings.
There's a lot of truth to that interpretation, that our Lord really is talking to us here
about humility.
But notice how Saint Luke begins.
He says that Jesus told a parable to those who were invited.
Whenever Jesus speaks in parables, he's usually giving a lesson about a spiritual reality,
so not just social etiquette instructions.
He says, when you're invited by someone to a wedding, banquet, or a marriage feast.
Verse 8.
When Jesus talks about a marriage feast, what is he usually talking about?
He's usually talking about the kingdom of God.
He's talking about being invited to share eternal life with him, being invited to paradise,
essentially.
So he wasn't just referring to dining at someone's home or at parties.
He's talking about something greater here.
In Eden, in the first paradise, Adam and Eve were created humble.
In Genesis 2, verse 7, we read that God formed man of the dust from the ground and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.
In Latin, humus is the word for the ground there, or the soil, so we get the word humilis,
or humble, or of the ground, from.
I mentioned this at a priest retreat I was preaching last month on St. Therese, and the
thought came to me that maybe even hummus, right, the food that we eat, hummus, maybe
that even comes from the Latin hummus.
And one of the priests says, well, that makes sense because it tastes like dirt, he said.
I didn't agree with him.
I actually like hummus, but I thought that was interesting.
So a humble person recognizes, acknowledges, and embraces their creatureliness, or their
lowliness, essentially.
But in that same verse, Genesis 2, verse 7, we see another ingredient that's necessary
for humility.
It says that God breathed into Adam's nostrils the breath of life.
So if we stretch that a bit, we can say that to be humble, you need to not only recognize
your creatureliness, but you have to have the breath, or the Spirit of God, sustaining
you, animating you, essentially.
So in God's kingdom, at God's marriage feast, it's humility and being guided by the Spirit
of God that really counts.
Humility is not mainly found in external signs, or gestures, or actions.
It's found only where God can find it, or not find it, right?
It's found first in the heart, and in the mind.
So it's primarily an interior disposition.
Some people can play at, or mask, humility if they want to, or if they think it's advantageous
to do so.
That's what our Lord says hypocrisy is, essentially, right?
Literally wearing a mask, pretending to be someone, or something, that you're not.
The New Testament Greek word hypocrisy, that's what it actually means.
It's what Jesus often accused the scribes and Pharisees of, hypocrisy.
Pretending to be holy and religious, but totally missing the mark, essentially.
If someone is honest and genuine, then yes, their humility, you'll see it in their words,
choices, actions, especially their reactions to.
But humility is primarily an interior reality, an interior disposition.
Regarding interior dispositions, less than two months before she died, St. Therese was
told one day by her sister Pauline, Pauline said, you must have struggled very much to
reach your degree of perfection, she told her.
Therese replied with what Pauline said was an indefinable tone of voice.
Therese said this to her, she said, that's not true at all.
She said, holiness doesn't consist in this or that practice.
It consists in a disposition of the heart, which makes us humble and little in God's
arms, conscious of our weakness and confident, even daringly confident, in the goodness of
our Father.
So holiness and humility are tied together on the inside, essentially, not so much what
you see on the outside.
When Jesus tells us to go and sit at the lowest place, verse 10, on one end, he's telling
us to be a humble servant of other people, especially of God's children, those who are
at the marriage feast, this example.
So learn to be a humble servant of them if you really want to get ahead of everyone else,
is what he's telling us.
If you really want to receive honor in God's eyes and in the eyes of heaven, he says, do
the tasks that no one envies.
Choose to be in the place where no one will look up to you.
Choosing the lowest place means choosing the least popular, least enviable place.
And St. Bede says in his commentary, he says that the marriage banquet here is the church,
so that would mean that choosing the lowest place means also not seeking honor or recognition
or prestige or power in the church.
If it is your choice, choose to do the least enviable activities in the church.
Maybe nowadays the least enviable activity might be to be a bishop, actually, of all
things, right?
With all respect to St. Charles Borromeo, it might actually be one of the humbler places
in the church nowadays.
On a more spiritual level, choosing the lowest place can also mean learning to consider others
as better than you, or at least as potentially better than you, especially for those of us
who struggle with pride, it's a great spiritual exercise to do that.
In other words, we need to become small in our own eyes.
Smaller you are, the bigger God can become in your life.
I think we've mentioned this before, we've shared this before, but in the second book
of the Chronicles of Narnia, written by C.S. Lewis, the main character, who's Aslan the
lion, he returns to Narnia and meets little Lucy, one of the four children who helped
save Narnia from the wicked witch.
Read that in the first book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Aslan is a figure that represents Christ, and upon seeing him, little Lucy is overjoyed,
and this is their dialogue.
She says, Aslan, Aslan, dear Aslan, sobbed Lucy at last.
Welcome, child, he said.
Aslan said, Lucy, you're bigger.
That is because you are older, little one, answered he.
Not because you are, I am not.
But every year you grow, you will find me bigger, he says.
Every year we grow spiritually.
Jesus is meant to become bigger in our life, and we're meant to become smaller, believe
it or not.
Lastly, when our Lord says go and sit at the lowest place, he's also saying, very simply,
please don't spoil my fun.
Don't try to exalt yourself in the eyes of others.
Let me do that, he's saying.
I love doing that with my children, and he does, he really does.
We really spoil God's fun when we try to look good in front of everyone.
God delights in honoring and raising up the lowly, and we rob him of that opportunity
when we're busy trying to make ourselves look better or seem more important.
What a waste of time, waste of energy when we do that, too.
And isn't it easier, instead of focusing on what everyone else is thinking or saying about
us or might be thinking or saying about us, isn't it easier to only focus on what one
person is thinking or saying about us, to only focus on what Jesus says about us?
It certainly should be a lot easier if we learn to live that way.
So why sit at the lowest place and do the lowliest tasks?
Because I know that God has a special love and a special preference for those people
in those places.
God has a special preference for the humble and for the lowly.
So Jesus says to us, he says, you have a choice.
You can try to and maybe even succeed in exalting yourself in other people's eyes, or you can
let me do that.
If you let me do that, that's the path to eternal life.
The other path's not as wonderful as it might seem right now.
So let's ask our Lady who knows what it means to be humble, let's ask her for the grace
to prefer what helps us to be humble and small, remembering our Lord's words, everyone who
exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.
Luke 14, verse 11.
Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Amen.
Amen.