Word to the Wise
Sunday, August 28, 2022 - 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time - C
[Sir 3:17-18, 20, 28-29; Heb 12:18-19, 22-24a; Luke 14:1, 7-14]My child, conduct your affairs with humility, and you will be loved more than a giver of gifts. Humble yourself the more, the greater you are, and you will find favor with God. [Sirach] For every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. [Luke]
One wonders what the host of the banquet, a "leading Pharisee," thought when Jesus said out loud to everyone that they shouldn't be jockeying for prestigious seating. We know that the apostles weren't immune from this, as well. James and John asked for priority seating in "the kingdom" they thought Jesus had come to establish! [Mark 10:35-45]. Even at the Last Supper there was argument over who would sit where. [Luke 22:24-27]. Jesus clearly teaches that humility means serving others rather than oneself.
The scene in today's gospel scripture begins with the common social custom in Jesus' day of seating people at a banquet according to their relationship to the host! (Not unknown in our own time, if we're honest!). Prestige and power seem to go together at times! But Jesus goes further and speaks to the host of the banquet and tells him that he should abandon the common social custom of inviting certain kinds of people in the expectation that they will return the favor! The Pharisee would never have invited "the poor, the crippled, the blind to his table. They were considered "unclean." And they certainly would not be in a position to return the favor!
Humility is not self-abasement, nor is it opposed to healthy ambition. In the Letter to the Romans, St. Paul exhorts us to have a realistic estimate ourselves, recognize what gifts we have and put those in service to the community. (Rom. 12:3-8). Those who seek power and prestige can be blind to the needs of their neighbor. Are we attracted to the lives of the "rich and famous?" Are the things most important to us the things that make us feel more powerful? St. John of the Cross once wrote that in the end what we shall be judged on is how we loved one another. Self-seeking power and prestige are the opposite of humility. The example of Jesus is the standard of humility. AMEN