Twenty-second Sunday of the Year - August 29, 2004

    Today’s readings point to really only one prominent theme: the theme of the virtue of humility. Occasionally we hear about humility these days. Occasionally. But how rarely do we hear about humility as a virtue. How rarely we hear about virtue at all.
    But virtue is a fascinating idea. The word itself is intriguing. It comes, ultimately, to us from the Latin word vir, which means simply man, male, the word we get virility from in English. Thus virtue carries the meaning of manliness or power, but not just any power, certainly not the idea of power of using knowledge to dominate everything and everybody. But rather, it means a human power, or better, a humanizing power, the potency to be all that it means to be human, to be noble, to be of excellent character. It carries the meaning, then, of being free from low desires and motives. The life of virtue leads to the idea of nobility ruling in the heart of a man or woman and setting them free to pursue excellence.
    With that in mind, we can take a better look at and better understand what our Lord is getting at in today’s Gospel and what He was always trying to get across to His followers: that the life He was calling them to was not one of going through mechanical motions to gain God’s favor. Rather, as He so often emphasized, He was calling them -- us -- to life, to the fullest of lives. Christ beckoned His disciples toward that life that is a living in freedom. “If you would be my disciple,” He said to them, “then do what I command you. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” In another place, Jesus made it clear that a human being’s freedom is not reduced to having the choice between doing the good or doing the evil. To do evil is to throw one’s freedom to the wind. He said, “To chose sin is to become a slave of sin.” And so we can safely assume that He meant too that to choose the good is to become free, more and more, from the degrading power of sin and evil.
    And humility is an essential and integral part of that coming into freedom. Jesus gives us practical instructions in how to develop the habit or virtue of humility: when you are invited to a dinner, go, take the lowest place. Don’t scramble around, maneuvering for the seats of honor and show. Humble yourself. And let another exalt you.
    So there we have two kinds of people: those who would secure for themselves notice and position and prestige, and then those who seek out the lowly place at the far end of the room, the place of little significance. We seek out the lowly place not in order to be exalted, but to learn the virtue of humility.
    To learn the virtue of humility. For what does one do with the person who, yes, comes into the banquet hall and immediately does what Jesus advises and goes to the lowest place; but while there cannot take, cannot tear his eyes -- and his heart -- from that seat at the high end of the table? That person, my friends, is still as much a prisoner to that craven desire for prestige as the silly fellow who rushes through the door and makes a bee-line for that very seat.
    No, the lesson our Lord would teach us is that there is a freedom that comes, with humility, in not only taking our eyes off the high place but also off ourselves, a kind of healthy self-forgetfulness. There is a freedom, a true liberation, from the that aching craving to be noticed, that vain search for self-esteem, self-fulfillment, self-realization -- all those things that modern culture brandishes about as such desirable things, even as we continue down the road of selfishness, self-centeredness and self-obsession. There is a freedom from all that, and it is humility, the virtue or power of humility, which we learn by taking the lowly place, by taking our eyes off the high place of pride, by taking our eyes off ourselves and placing them upon Him from whom alone all true exaltation comes.
    Have we not seen how He, God, does this? “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord,” said she who is exalted above all other creatures, Queen of all Saints and Angels. How hidden was the life of Mary, yet how essential; how supremely self-sacrificing and how fruitful. But she, being the wise and most holy woman that she was, she saw within that virtue of humility its true power to liberate and elevate. For this humble servant of God also said, “Behold, henceforth, all generations will call me blessed.”
    And if this is not enough to convince us, then let us contemplate the humility of God Himself. Here is the great mystery of mysteries: that when God revealed Himself in the final and supreme way through Christ the Son of God, He did it, as St. Paul describes it, in this way: “Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him....”
    God took the lowly place, because, simply put, He is humble. We take the lowly place to learn that kind of humility. Not groveling before others, not engaging in the theatrics of self-humiliation, but simply taking our eyes off the prideful place, off of ourselves, and then knowing all the freedom that flows from that. There is no, there cannot be, any kind of lasting and true exaltation that is not at the same time true liberation. Humility is freeing. Our Lord said, “Everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled and he who humbles himself shall be exalted.”