22nd Sunday Ordinary Time

Readings: Sirach 3:17-18,20,28-29, Hebrews 12:18-19,22-24a, Luke 14:2,7-14

Jesus wants to talk to us about humility and what that might look like in our lives and what meanings it might have for us. Real humility is living in the truth of who we are before God and who we are in relationship with one another. Our present culture values neither truth nor humility and so this teaching on humility is at times difficult to accept.

The first reading today tells us, that the teaching is that humility will make a person loved, even more than giving gifts to others. Humility always places us below others so that we can serve them without resentment and with true love and appreciation. The higher position we have in the world, the deeper is our need for humility. Such humility will be shown in having an attentive ear. Today, we would say that we need to listen to other person. Humility also known in the person who listens attentively to wisdom stories, to proverbs and to real life situations that help us to understand others and respect them.

Wisdom is not an intellectual activity. No, it is the gift of knowing how to live well in every situation while maintaining our deepest values. At times wisdom can lead us to martyrdom, since that is only way to live our lives well. Often wisdom knows how to be still and keep silence so that all our attention is focused on knowing what our situation really is.

As a practical spiritual exercise, today we might try to still and silent and just listen to others and see what that listening does to us interiorly.

The Gospel today invites us to think about how we think and act in relationship to others, do we put ourselves forward or do we stay in the background unless we are called forward? Perhaps even more importantly, how do we think of ourselves as less than others.  We can stay in the background and still think others as fools!

Jesus invites us to think always last and the least, think ourselves as less than others. This has nothing to do with the poor self-image nor with psychological problems! Rather, this is an invitation to live in truth with others and forge a new relationship with others by changing our of thinking of them.