Regarding Others As More Important and Inviting Them to Dinner, 31st Monday (II), November 4, 2024

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Monday of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of St. Charles Borromeo
November 4, 2024
Phil 2:1-4, Ps 131, Lk 14:12-14

To listen to an audio recording of this homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• In this month of November, we focus on the call that the Lord has given us to be holy as he is holy. Today, Jesus and St. Paul speak to us about the path to holiness. Let’s begin with St. Paul.
• On Friday, if we did not have the celebration of All Saints, we would have begun reading at daily Mass from St. Paul’s beautiful letter to the Philippians, which we will have throughout until Friday. Philippi was the first place in Europe to hear the Gospel. It was the place where, after St. Paul had had a dream of a Macedonian asking him to come over, he left Troas and went on a boat to Neapolis, eventually coming to Philippi, a Roman colony with lots of disunity. It was there he met Lydia and stayed in her house. It was there he cured the possessed girl whom others were using to divine by the power of the devil. It was there he was thrown in jail and liberated by the earthquake. St. Paul had a special relationship with Philippi. It was the only place from which he accepted charity for himself, probably to give its people a chance to repair for the sufferings he endured there. He had a great desire for its unity and sanctity, and this letter was meant to help everyone come to unity. The real climax and center of the letter we will hear tomorrow, when St. Paul will tell us “Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus.” He calls us to put on Christ’s mind, to adapt ourselves to the Lord, to respond to his grace to think as Christ thinks, to will as Christ wills, to act as Christ acts. That’s his fundamental prayer for the Christians in Philippi and for the Christians in New York. That’s the path to holiness. That’s the proper context to understand what he says in today’s first reading: “Complete my joy by being of the same mind, with the same love, united in heart, thinking one thing.” Their unity will come about by their all attuning their minds and hearts to Christ’s. Once that happens, then the rest of his prayer will come about: “Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory,” because Christ did everything out of selflessness and for the Father’s glory. “Rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests but also everyone for those of others.” Christ ultimately regarded us as more important than himself, giving his life to save our lives. Even though he was God, he became our servant so that we might enter into divine life. When we adopt Christ’s attitude, then we, too, will not act out of self-centeredness or for earthly fame but will seek God’s glory, kingdom and will. We will seek to follow Christ’s example of greatness by becoming the servant of all, by washing the feet of others, by giving our lives for their salvation. We will seek, like Jesus did, to empty ourselves and become a servant, obeying God all the way to death.
• We see that attitude, that mindset, of Christ in today’s Gospel when he gives invitation advice to those who had been invited to a dinner with him, a dinner in which he cured a man with dropsy to their scandal (as we would have heard on Friday if we didn’t have the proper readings for All Saints), a dinner in which he spoke about taking the lowest seats. He teaches us not to have dinner parties out of self-interest or for our own vanity or ambition — something that was probably taking place then as the creme de la creme were invited for the dinner with Jesus, an increasingly famous traveling rabbi — but out of charity, to serve others with love. “When you hold a lunch or a dinner,” Jesus said, “do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment. Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” Jesus’ advice is revolutionary, because most of us naturally invite to dinner those family and friends or people with whom we can do business or guests of honor who can make us feel important. Jesus is telling us to invite the seeming nobodies, the handicapped, the overlooked and marginalized, those who often go without food, not to mention don’t receive invitations. This is precisely what he does in the Eucharist, inviting not just everybody including those who are challenged in any way, but us, who are often so poor in our relationship with him, crippled in our ability to do his work, lame in our ability to follow him when it gets strenuous, blind in our ability to see him in others or in various circumstances. He invites not just the Blessed Virgin to dinner, but those who have betrayed him and will betray him, those who cannot possibly ever repay him. And he tells us to do the same.
• The point I would like to stress today, however, as we ponder this month the example of all the saints, is what Jesus says at the end of passage. He tells those who act on his words and invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind, “Blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” He doesn’t just say at the “resurrection,” because we know that at the end of time, there will be the “resurrection of life” and the “resurrection of condemnation” (Jn 5:29), there will be the separation of the “sheep” and the “goats,” respectively, to the kingdom of the Father or to the fire prepared for the devil and his angels (Mt 25:31-46). Jesus says specifically that those who do this will be repaid at the resurrection of the “righteous.” The only way we’ll be repaid there is if we are indeed righteous. Jesus is indicating to us a clear path to heaven by acting on what he’s teaching today: the actual act of inviting and caring for those who cannot pay for us, as well as the spiritual point of not doing things in any circumstance in order to be repaid. The path to heaven may be as simple as this, by loving and caring for those who can’t reward us here, because in so doing, we will be having the same attitude as found in Christ Jesus and pouring ourselves out kenotically like Christ. We will be humbly regarding others as more important than ourselves, looking out not for our own interests but also for those of others.
• Today we celebrate a saint who, as Archbishop of Milan, literally hosted dinner parties on Jesus’ invitation list. Later, during a plague, he organized the feeding of 60,000 to 70,000 poor, handicapped and often contagious people every day. He was one who had the same attitude of Christ, humbly regarded even the most worldly insignificant as more important than him, and sought to serve them with love until the end of his life. Born of the incredibly wealthy and influential Medici family, he could have easily become haughty and worldly. At 22, because his uncle was Pope Pius IV, he was made a Cardinal without ordination. God brought good out of this nepotism, however, because St. Charles — even at a ridiculously young age — quickly became the principal figure in reforming the Church after the Protestant Reformation through helping to bring the Council of Trent to conclusion. When his elder brother died, his family expected him to resign his offices and return to run the family estate, but he preferred God to them and he made the definitive choice for Holy Orders. He had been appointed Administrator of the Archdiocese of Milan — then the largest diocese in the world — as a benefice, but as soon as Pius IV had died and the Council completed, he was able to be ordained subdeacon, deacon, priest and bishop and take up the charge as Archbishop. There he encountered a very corrupt situation throughout, where most people, including priests and religious, were not acting in accordance with their Christian dignity. His famous phrase was, “Be who you promised you would be,” in baptism, in marriage, and in holy orders. He corrected and fought abuses out of love for them and those harmed, calling clergy to care for their flock against wolves and to help heal their wounds. He formed priests and religious and built seminaries to train priests well so that they might be good shepherds with the attitude of Christ, the eternal high priest, and serve others by his instructions, rather than looking out for their own interests, since many of the problems that afflicted lay people had to do with clergy who were setting a scandalous example. Such reform led to his receiving much opposition.   One religious community that didn’t want to be reformed actually sent some monks to try to murder him while he was praying in his chapel. Miraculously, however, the bullet that hit him in the back simply fell to the ground. Because of his hard work at reform, however, the Catholics of Milan and — because of his work in Rome — across much of the Catholic world experienced the fruits of reform. More than anything, he sought to help the clergy recognize that to live and serve with Christ’s mindset required them to be willing to risk their lives for the flock. In 1576, when Milan was undergoing mass starvation and the ravages of the plague, the governor, most of his officials, and most of the nobles, all fled. But St. Charles remained and begged the clergy and the religious not to abandon the sheep entrusted to them, urging them to prefer a holy death to a late one. He had already been giving most of his earnings to the care of the poor, but to meet this crisis, he exhausted his personal fortune, even taking on large debts. He similarly sold many of the Church’s vessels. Each day he was feeding 60,000 to 70,000 poor and often contagious people daily. He challenged the clergy and religious: “The same Son of God, who for the sake of the salvation of all men, including his enemies and the impious, was fixed to the cross and died in the greatest shame and the bitterest torment, invites us to go forward into the danger of a quiet and glorious death for devout brethren. He to whom we owe as much repayment as we could not obtain by dying a thousand times without end, does not even request this pathetic life of ours, but only that we put it at risk. … It is indeed a desirable time now when without the cruelty of the tyrant, without the rack, without fire, without beasts, and in the complete absence of harsh tortures that are usually the most frightful to human weakness, we can obtain the crown of martyrdom.” He ended up dying basically of exhaustion at 46, but in his few years, he accomplished so much more than most people who have lived far longer, because he had Christ’s mentality and regarded others as greater and worthy to be served.  Today we turn to God and ask him, in the words of today’s opening prayer, to help us to become more like St. Charles in this imitation: “Preserve in the midst of your people, we ask, O Lord, the spirit with which you filled the Bishop Saint Charles Borromeo, that your Church may be constantly renewed and, by conforming herself to the likeness of Christ, may show his face to the world.”
• Today as we approach the altar with all our handicaps, Jesus seeks to nourish us with himself so that having his mind and heart we, like St. Charles, may make room at this table for all those who are not here who need Jesus just as much as we do, and to make room at our our tables and in our lives, for those Jesus loves so much that he gave his life to save.

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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