22nd. Sunday, Year (C)
(Sirach
3:17s., 20, 28s.; Hebrews 12: 18s., 22-24a; Luke 14:1, 7-11)
The story about the place of honour at the wedding feast
seems, of itself, to be merely worldly advice; indeed, it seems to lead to a rather
hypocritical semblance of humility, with the subject publicly choosing the lowest
place whilst not only thinking himself worthy of a higher place, but indeed
planning to receive honour in the sight of the other guests on being called
higher by the host. And yet, Our Blessed
Lord uses such worldly scheming as a parable for heavenly truth and experience.
This, first of all, teaches us that our basic human
attitudes and feelings are orientated towards the good ... that our human
nature is not fundamentally vitiated. Though we
are indeed weak, ignorant, and sinful, our human nature is by no means totally
corrupted, nor is our natural sensitivity without a measure of spiritual awareness.
We have been and are made in the image of God, and this nature of ours
is disturbed in the depths of its being by sin which, fundamentally, does not
suit us.
The story told by Jesus about the natural embarrassment one
would feel on being dismissed from the highest seat and sent to the lowest, is
concerned not only with the resulting public humiliation, but also with the morally
good response of deep personal embarrassment on being thus publicly
obliged to admit one’s overweening pride and self-esteem on having originally arrogated
the place of honour at the banquet table.
Human nature is made for God and can at times warn us of
the presence of sin – something opposed and foreign to our true good -- when
our explicit thinking is unable or unwilling to detect or recognize such a
presence. For example, most young
people will instinctively feel embarrassment or even a certain fear at the
first wrongful sex activity, whereby their basically good human nature warns
them even when their minds and consciences are not sufficiently aware or
enlightened; and how, indeed, can they subject themselves to their very first experience
of dangerous drugs leading to experiences
with unknowable personal consequences without instinctive trepidation? Adults also may make ‘faux-pas’ or gaffs in
public and feel intense embarrassment as a result; and often enough, such
feelings are not merely due to an anticipated loss of face, but also to the
awareness of having originally spoken foolishly out of personal vanity, or fulsomely
in a quest for human acceptance and praise.
Human nature is, I repeat, still good and sensitive enough to
give authentic warning signals -- truly, intimations of immortality -- to our
minds and explicit thinking. Unfortunately,
however, we can so quickly learn to resist and confuse our residual integrity,
fighting against or even rejecting our instinctive modesty and honesty, with
the result that even prostitutes and murderers, thieves, traducers, and traitors,
become hard-faced as the Scriptures and daily-life experience in the world
today tell us, and such people will say, ‘Where is our sin; what harm are we
doing, we’re not hurting anyone who doesn’t deserve it are we?
But why, after wrongly choosing the highest place at the
feast, in our Gospel story, would the person concerned have to betake himself
to the lowest seat of all? Here Our Blessed Lord has adapted the real-life
situation somewhat in order to fit it for its present function as a parable of
heavenly truth. For, before God, none of
us can, in truth, say that we are more worthy than anyone else: first of all,
because we rarely – indeed, at times, will not – recognize the sin in our own
lives, and secondly because we can never penetrate the hearts of others. Therefore, the only attitude for a
conscientious Christian is to take the lowest seat of all. For greatness in the Kingdom of God is
determined not by our opinion of our own worth or that of anyone else, but by
God’s judgment, as St. Paul says (1 Corinthians 4:1-5):
With me it is a very small thing
that I should be judged by you or by any human court. I do not even judge myself. I am not aware of anything against myself,
but I am not thereby acquitted. It is
the Lord Who judges me. Therefore do not
pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, Who will bring to
light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the
heart. Then every man will receive his
commendation from God.
This part of our Gospel passage for today is rounded off by
a general statement which seems to have been a favourite saying of Our Lord:
Everyone who exalts himself will
be humbled, and the man who humbles himself will be exalted.
Pride, self-assertion in ordinary human society is both bad
manners and bad policy, but in the Kingdom of God it is totally
inadmissible. There, ‘pride goes before
a fall’, and there
is only kind of privilege and dignity: the kind that comes to those who do not
seek it, but rather seek to love and serve God and are content to walk humbly
and at peace with their neighbour. The
advice given in our Gospel reading about who to invite to your parties, is not
meant to be exclusive of anyone, rich or poor, close friends or chance
passers-by; the hospitality advised by Jesus is one which seeks to give
generously, not to get, surreptitiously.
To all who are in need -- and the rich can be in need also – we should
give, if our conscience calls and as our conscience guides; give, that is, in
generous simplicity not with calculating discernment.
To close, let me offer you a story, from the early Desert
Fathers, of one who knew how to give, when faced with need, and what is
much more, he learned how to humble himself in his giving:
Before Abba Poemen’s group came to Scetis, there was an old
man in Egypt who enjoyed considerable fame and repute. But when Abba Poemen’s group went up to Scetis,
men left the old man to go to see Abba Poemen. Abba Poemen was grieved at this
and said to his disciples, ‘What is to be done about this great old man, for
men grieve him by leaving him and coming to us who are nothing? What shall we do, then, to comfort this old
man?’ He said to them, ‘Make ready a
little food, and take a skin of wine and let us go to see him and eat with
him. And so we shall be able to comfort
him.’ So they put together some food,
and went.
When they knocked at the door, the old man’s one
remaining disciple answered, saying, ‘Who are you?’ They responded, ‘Tell the abba, it is Poemen
who desires to be blessed by him.’ The
disciple reported this to the old man who sent him back telling him to say to
Poemen, ‘Go away, I have no time.’ Nevertheless,
in spite of the heat, they persevered, saying: ‘We shall not go away till we
have been allowed to meet the old man.’
Seeing their humility and patience, the old man was filled with
compunction and opened the door to them himself. Then they went in and ate with him. During the meal he said, ‘Truly, not only
what I have heard about you is true, but I see that your works are a
hundred-fold greater than those reports’, and from that day he became their friend,
and the beauty of mutual appreciation and respect was restored among the
brethren. (2022)
