Saint Joseph’s Humble Path to Exaltation, 30th Saturday (I), October 30, 2021

Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Anthony of Padua Parish, New Bedford, MA
Saturday of the 30th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Day of Recollection for Men on “Saint Joseph and the Call to Manly Holiness”
October 30, 2021
Rom 11:1-2.11-12.25-29, Ps 84, Lk 14:1.7-11

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Today as we host here at St. Anthony’s a Day of Recollection for Men dedicated to the theme of Saint Joseph and the Call to Manly Holiness, Jesus, in the Gospel, speaks to us of one of the virtues in which St. Joseph excelled: the virtue of humility. The path of manly holiness on which St. Joseph seeks to lead us, the path of eternal exaltation, is a path of humility. By means of a parable on seats at a dinner gathering, Jesus teaches us about the humility necessary for us to come to the eternal banquet. The parable flat contradicts the way many in the world, including sometimes many of us Christians, behave. We see it in the ever-growing number of award shows indulging the egos of those in film, television and music, all giving out awards for best actors, actresses, directors, producers, graphic artists, costume designers, film editors, hairstylists, production designer, sound mixers, screen play writers, you name it. We see it in the honors we give to the students who are  “Most Popular” “Most Friendly, and “Most Likely to Succeed,” to the “Best Looking” women in pageants, to the “Most Successful” sales representatives, to the “Most Valuable Player” not just of the year but of the week, and even to the “best groomed” dogs. So many of us have been raised with a burning desire to be the best, and even more so to be acknowledged as the best. And if we recognize begrudgingly that we’re not the best, we at least want to be better than those with whom we come into contact or are in competition. We want to get our own way, rather than conceding to the wishes of another. We want everyone to acknowledge our rights and their responsibilities. We want to get the last word, rather than concede it to someone else. We want to be the ones noticed and thanked, and resent it if others get the credit we think we deserve. In short, we hunger to be noticed, esteemed, and exalted. We want the places of honor at table, first class seats on airplanes and front row seats and back stage passes at concerts. We want waiters and butlers to serve us, chauffeurs to drive us, and the rich, famous and important to call us. We long for positions of power and influence and titles of status and worldly honor. This is particularly a problem for men in our uber competitiveness. St. Joseph is a remedy. As we’ll have a chance to ponder a lot today, he was a quiet man of action, who humbly cared for Mary and Joseph, content to remain in the background, to allow them to shine and remain in their shadow.
• Today, however, Jesus calls us to that standard of Saint Joseph, a higher standard that is at the same time, paradoxically, a lower one. He tell us, “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” Jesus, who elsewhere in the Gospel told us, “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart” (Mt 11:29) and whose whole life was a lesson in humility, wants to help us learn from him how to serve rather than to be served, to seek the lowest place rather than the highest, to treasure God’s esteem rather than others’ adulation so that God may say to us, in this world and the next, like he said to St. Joseph, “My friend, come up higher!” The way to be exalted at Jesus’ right side forever is humbly to serve at Jesus’ side here on earth, and to follow him not just in seeking the lowest places at table but in getting up from the table like he did at the Last Supper, picking up the basin and towel to wash others’ feet, and serving them in such self-effacing ways.
• St. Therese used to teach that the way to grow in the spiritual life is by subtraction, not addition; it’s not to climb a high mountain, but to go down into the valley of humility before God and others. St. Bernard used to teach that the three most important virtues are humility, humility and humility. Our Lady echoes in her Magnificat that her soul was proclaiming the Lord’s greatest and her spirit rejoicing in God her savior “for he has looked upon his handmaid’s lowliness; behold, from now on will all ages call me blessed.” St. Joseph puts all of those lessons into practice.
• Like many of you, I pray Cardinal Merry del Val’s Litany of Humility, which is one of the boldest prayers ever written, and it was composed by someone who was Cardinal Secretary of State at 38 (for St. Pius X) and considered a favorite for the papacy because of his prominence. It would have been easy for him to become vain, to seek to have others kiss the back of his cassock, to seek to rule over others. It would have been easy for him to fight back when he had setbacks. Instead he wrote the Litany of Humility, asking God to give him the grace to deliver him from the desire of being esteemed, loved, extolled, honored, praised, preferred, consulted, and approved and from the fear of being humiliated, rebuked, calumniated, forgotten, ridiculed, wronged and suspected. He begged the Lord that others might be more loved, esteemed, chosen, praised, and preferred to him, that others might increase and he decrease, even that others might become holier provided that he become as holy as he should. This Litany of Humility is a Litany of the Saints, insofar as it is in the saints that we fight this prayer answered and lived. It is also a Litany of Saint Joseph, because those are the attributes he took on.
• St. Paul was another saint who became truly holy because of his humility. At first he was as strong personality who would tell people off to their face. He was filled with learning, one of the best students of the Great Rabbi Gamaliel, someone who had received big commissions at a young age to try to destroy the Church. But the Lord converted him. He allowed himself to be led and baptized. He disappeared into the desert for 14 years to pray and learn anew. Because others didn’t trust his conversion, he returned to making tents. Eventually after Barnabas came to get him, he eventually poured himself out like a libation for the sake of others, seeking to become all things to all people so as to save some. He had a humiliating “thorn” in his flesh, whatever that was, but it was through bearing it that he learned that God’s grace was sufficient for him. He proclaimed that God called nobodies, the humble of the world, to shame those who thought they were somebodies. And he grasped that it was truly when he was weak that he was strong, because then God’s power was able to work through him with no resistance. He calls us to have in us the “same mind that was in Christ Jesus” who “Though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.  Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance,  he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.  Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,  that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,  and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
• In today’s first reading we see one aspect of the way he had put on the mind of Christ and was following him down the road of humility. Chapters 9-11 of the Letter to the Romans are all about the salvation of the Jews and, as daily Massgoers heard yesterday, Paul was willing to be cut off from Christ if by doing so he could save his fellow Jews, some of whom were plotting to kill him just like others had conspired to kill Jesus. He saw his whole life as an offering for their salvation. He said God’s plan was to subject everyone to disobedience so that he could have mercy toward all: first the disobedience of so many Jews so that the Gospel could be taken to the Gentiles and then, through the humble example of the love of Christians fulfilling the Covenants God had begun with the Jews, through Christian lowly service like Paul’s service, the Jews might be humbled from seeking salvation through their works to accept the fullness of revelation and come to salvation with the Gentiles. God indeed humbled himself in this way and Paul was following Christ down that road of rejection, receiving it in such a way that it might be salvific and bring others through humility toward holiness. Saint Joseph is the model Jew, the true son of Abraham, a guileless direct descendent of David. He is interceding together with our Lady for what the Holy Spirit revealed to us through Saint Paul today will come about.
• Today at this Mass, as we prepare to receive the food that makes saints, we ask the Lord to help us to enter into communion with his humility. What he does in the Eucharist is something far humbler even than the incarnation: the eternal Son of God, the King of Kings, hides himself behind the appearance of Bread and Wine in order that we might eat him without being grossed out — and then he tells us “Do this in memory of me!” May we receive Humility Incarnate with faith and learn from Jesus’ self-abasement the path to eternal exaltation with Mary, Joseph, Paul and all the Saints!

The readings for today’s Mass were:

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