The Humble, Eucharistic Path to Exaltation, 30th Saturday (I), November 4, 2023

Fr. Roger J. Landry
St. Anthony of Padua Parish, Hillsdale, Michigan
Parish Eucharistic Revival: “Working for the Food that Endures to Eternal Life”
Saturday of the 30th Week in Ordinary Time, Year I
Memorial of St. Charles Borromeo
November 4, 2023
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 St. Anthony’s hosts a Parish Retreat on the Eucharist as part of the national Eucharistic Revival, Jesus focuses our attention in the Gospel on the virtue of humility. The Eucharist is the greatest manifestation of all of Jesus’ loving humility. It wasn’t enough for the Son of God to humble himself and take on our humanity. It wasn’t sufficient for him merely to humble himself by taking upon the form of a slave and come not to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for ours. It wasn’t adequate for him to humble himself by becoming obedient even to death on the Cross. He humbled himself so much more, willing to become our food and conceal his divine majesty and his sacred humanity under the appearances of bread and wine. For us to live a truly Eucharistic life means to live with the humility of Jesus who is meek and humble of heart. Before Jesus in the Eucharist, we humble ourselves before God himself. And then, from the inside, the Eucharistic Jesus seeks to make us humble like him so that we may be like bread broken for others in humble service. And this is the path, Jesus says, that leads to eternal exaltation.
• 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, and more. 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 not just to be the best, but 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 humble give 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.
• Today, however, Jesus calls us to a different standard, a much 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 told us what we heard in today’s Alleluia verse, “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,  “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. Paul was someone who became truly holy because of his humility. At first he had a 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. And Saul of Tarsus humbly 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, which he never specified, 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” but “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave” and “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 St. Paul’s, 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.
• Another saint who lived this humility was Saint Charles Borromeo, whom the Church celebrates today. Born of the incredibly wealthy and influential Medici family, he could have easily become inflated and arrogant. 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, 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, however, the Catholics of Milan experienced the fruits of reform. More than anything, he sought to help the clergy recognize that to be a good shepherd 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.” Because of all of these ministrations, St. Charles ended up dying of exhaustion at 46, but in his relatively short life of humble, loving service, he accomplished so much more than most people who have lived far longer.
• St. Charles Borromeo learned humility through his daily contact with the humility of Jesus in the Eucharist and he sought to help reform the Church through helping, first, the priests and religious, and then the faithful of Milan, to live truly Eucharistic lives and learn from the Eucharistic Lord how to be meek and humble of heart. He preached a homily on Holy Thursday in 1567 on how we’re called to imitate Christ’s Eucharistic example. He pondered how Jesus began the Last Supper by taking on the form of a slave and humbly washing his apostles’ feet, doing so as an example so that, just as he has washed our feet, we may go to do the dirty work in washing others’ feet, souls and lives. From there, he continued, he humbly fed the apostles with his own Body and Blood. He even showed kindness to Judas, not exposing his treachery to the others, sitting him at the place of honor at his left, and even feeding him. He finished that homily by saying, “Let us be moved by such humble submission in such majesty and let us humble ourselves with the Lord, if we desire to be exalted with him. With him let us serve the poor, if we wish to reign with him. Let us wash one another’s feet, if we wish to be considered disciples of Christ. Let us conform ourselves in life to our head, and he will deign to conform us to himself in glory.”
• Today at this Mass, as we prepare to receive the food that helped make Charles Borromeo a saint, we ask our Eucharistic Lord to help us to enter into communion with his humility as he instructs 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 Charles, Paul, Anthony, Mary, Joseph, and all the Saints, so that from our humility here Jesus will one lady be able to say to us, forever, “Friend, come up higher!”

The readings for today’s Mass were:

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