The Humble and Weak

Homily for Saturday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time

The last two lines of today’s Gospel text summarize a familiar theme in St. Luke’s Gospel. The very first chapter of the Gospel of St. Luke contains the stories of the annunciation of the birth of St. John the Baptist and of Jesus. No doubt, you remember that the announcement of St. John’s birth takes place in the Temple of Jerusalem while the announcement of the birth of Jesus takes place in the humble home of a maiden in Nazareth. The very setting of the stories illuminates the theme; namely, the reversal of fortunes. It is also in the first chapter that we hear the Canticle of the Virgin Mary in which she gives several examples of the theme: God has dispersed the arrogant of mind and heart, thrown down the rulers from their thrones and lifted up the lowly, fed the hungry and sent the rich away empty.

However, there is a hidden snare in this theme. We might feel a certain self-satisfaction, a smugness, when placing ourselves in the context of the canticle. An unintentional thought might cross our minds; “Aha,” we might be thinking, “they will get their just desserts in the end.” In other words, we might think of ourselves as being the lowly, the humble, the weak; and with that thought might think of ourselves with a certain self-satisfaction. Without even intending it, we would soon find ourselves on the other end of the equation. Such thoughts are not the thoughts of a humble person.

Consequently, the real lesson to be learned from the parable that we heard today is that all of us must constantly work toward humility. There is always the danger of exalting ourselves in our own minds even while acting like the humble servant in the eyes of others. The gift of the Eucharist teaches us the humility of self-sacrifice, of a self-effacing existence. Just as Jesus willingly gave himself over to the Will of his Father, we are reminded through this sacrament of our need of a consciousness of conversion. This is the true message of the Eucharist, the sacrificial life and death of our Lord Jesus.