Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time (C), Conversations with Consequences Podcast, August 27, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Conversations with Consequences Podcast
Homily for the Twenty-Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, C, Vigil
August 27, 2022

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

The following text guided the homily: 

• This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday as Jesus, by means of a parable on seats at a dinner gathering, teaches us about the humility necessary to come to the eternal wedding banquet.
• The parable flatly 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, as they give out awards for best actors, actresses, directors, producers, graphic artists, costume designers, film editors, hairstylists, production designers, sound mixers, screen play writers, you name it. We see it in the honors we give to the students who are “Most Popular” and “Most Likely to Succeed,” to the “Best Looking” women in beauty pageants, to the “Most Successful” sales representatives, to the “Most Valuable Player” in sports leagues, and even to the “best groomed” dogs. So many of us have been raised with the desire not only to be the best, but to be acknowledgedas 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. We want to get our own way, rather than conceding to the wishes of another. 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 at concerts. We long for positions of power and influence and titles of status and worldly honor.
• Jesus, however, calls us to a different standard, a higher standard that is at the same time, paradoxically, a lower one. He tell us in this Sunday’s Gospel, “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” He who elsewhere in the Gospel told us, “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart”(Mt 11:29), 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, the words of the host in this Sunday’s Gospel: “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.
• To become meek and humble of heart like Jesus, especially in a proud and self-exalting age, is obviously easier said than done. We must first know what humility is and then know and choose the means by which we can grow in humility.
• Let’s begin with what humility means. Humility comes from the Latin word, humus, which means ground or dirt. It has various connected spiritual meanings. It means, first, that we have both of our feet on the ground, that we have a deep sense of who we are. As we hear every year on Ash Wednesday, we recognize we’re dust and unto dust we shall return. We acknowledge our human weaknesses and limitations. At the same time, however, humility means that even though know we’re dust, we also recognize that God has breathed into us the breath of life, that he calls us through a humble life to greatness, to a communion of love with him and others. To use St. Paul’s image, we’re vessels of clay carrying within an immense treasure; (2 Cor 4:7). To be humble, we need to keep both of these things in mind. To be humble doesn’t mean that we think that we’re losers. Consistent with the overall message of the Gospel, it means, rather, that we’re ex-captives who have been liberated by Jesus and have become adopted children of the King. Humility means never forgetting where we have come from, but also remembering the greatness that our relationship with God confers on us.
• Knowing what humility is, we can now turn to how to grow in humility. I’d like to mention five practices.
• The first is to value God’s love and live in it. One of the things that spawns pride, that drives us to prop ourselves up and seek better places at tables, is that we don’t always remember who we are already in God and the greatness we bear as his beloved children. We seek worldly honors, esteem, and perches because, psychologically, we think we need them. We don’t recognize how much God esteems and loves us, how much he’s honored us by adopting us into the royal family, and how he already has ready for us the greatest seats of all in heaven, provided that we’re able to abase ourselves on earth enough to be exalted to take those exalted places at the eternal banquet. The more we focus on who we truly are in God’s eyes, the more we will see that worldly honors are a vanity of vanities — and sometimes even a millstone.
• The second practice to grow in humility is truly to prioritize the love of others. As we grow in our awareness of God’s love for us, we can’t help but grow in awareness of God’s love for others, and that helps us to prioritize their interests over ours. In this Sunday’s parable, Jesus tells us when we’re throwing a dinner party, to invite not our family, friends, wealthy neighbors and those who can return the favor, but rather those who cannot repay us, namely, the poor, crippled, lame and blind, and to do so not out of largesse or condescension but out of love, recognizing how special the poor are to God and what their true status is before God. One of the reasons why we fight for seats at tables rather than for towels to wash others’ feet is because we struggle to love others sincerely. When we really love someone, however, we want them to have the best seats, even if that means we sit behind them. When we really love someone, we want them to be praised, well-fed, helped, and happy. That’s why when we grow in true love of others such that we serve them willingly, we become humbler, without often even knowing it.
• The third practice to grow in humility is humble prayer. Not all prayer is humble. Jesus elsewhere told a parable of two men who went up to the temple to pray, one a despised tax collector and the other a respected Pharisee. The tax collector sat in the back beating his chest and crying, “Lord, be merciful to me a sinner.” The Pharisee, on the other hand, sat in the front to be noticed and prayed aloud thanking God for not making him a loser like so many others to whom he was arrogantly comparing himself. Jesus tells us that only one of the two left the Temple in a right relationship with God, the humble tax collector, not the proud and self-righteous Pharisee. We, too, are called to pray humbly and to pray specifically for the gift of humility. One of the most helpful prayers I’ve ever found to do this is Cardinal Merry del Val’s Litany of Humility, printed everywhere on the internet and in every solid prayer book, which I strongly recommend to you.
• The fourth practice Christ teaches us to grow in humility is to accept sufferings and humiliations well. We can’t be human without experiencing suffering, embarrassment, put downs, and various other highly unpleasant circumstances. These things, however, can make us bitter or better, depending on whether we relate them to the Lord and give him permission to draw good out of them for us. When a proud, self-reliant man, for example, gets hospitalized and becomes so dependent that a nurse even has to change his bedpans, it can make him humble quickly if he responds to the help with gratitude rather than grumbling. The cross of suffering and humiliations helps us to die to our ego, and one of the reasons why God allows us to endure such things is precisely because so that they can help us grow in humility. Growth in humility is far more valuable that whatever we “lose” in circumstances of suffering.
• The fifth and last practice I’ll mention are the sacraments. Every sacrament is an admission that we are not self-sufficient, that we need God and his grace. In each Sacrament we go to God with empty hands and ask him to give us himself in the way we need. But we can highlight two Sacraments that God allows us to receive over and again that help us grow in humility. The first is the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation, in which we recognize our sins and failings but, even more importantly, the infinite treasure of God’s mercy. There’s no better way to fight against pride than to examine our conscience, see that we’re not who we ought to be, that in our thoughts, words, acts and omissions, we have “greatly sinned” and strayed big time from the path of Christ’s footsteps, and humbly go to God through one of his priests for mercy. The second Sacrament is the Holy Eucharist, which is the perhaps greatest means of all that we can learn from Jesus who is meek and humble of heart. On Calvary Jesus hid only his divinity; in the Eucharist he hides even his humanity under the appearances of simple bread and wine. He becomes so small in order to feed us, to serve us, to change us, to make us holy from the inside. When we enter into Holy Communion with him, we ourselves learn how to become small and humble, how to decrease so that he and others can increase, so that together with him we can go out to serve others in such a way that through us and our Christian example, they might themselves follow us on the way of humility and have God one day say to them as well, “Friend, come up higher!” As we come to receive Jesus in Holy Communion this Sunday, let us ask him, for others and for ourselves, “O Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make our hearts humble like yours!” Amen!

The Gospel on which this Sunday’s homily was based was: 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download