22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
First Reading: Sir 3:17-20, 28-29
Second Reading: Heb 12:18-19, 22-24a
Gospel Reading: Lk 14:1, 7-14

This Sunday’s Gospel reading brings back memories.

After I had officiated at the wedding of people I knew well, I entered the hall for the reception, and someone called, “Come and sit with us, Father.”

I went over to chat, but I explained, smirking, that I would be sitting at the head table.

However, when I reached the front of the hall, I found there was no place there for me. “In disgrace,” I started to take “the lowest place.” I ended up sitting with people I did not even know.

I laugh as I recall this incident, but in truth I was humbled because I had been exalting myself, however trivial the circumstances.

We thank God for his gifts to us, but we all think, deep down, that we have something to offer him in return: goodness, intelligence, beauty, generosity, service, or love.

No, we have absolutely nothing of our own. Everything we are, have, know, and can do are pure gifts that God gives us out of love, with no payment demanded and no strings attached.

God is like a father who gives his child an allowance and then is pleased because the child buys him a present with it. If we get to heaven, it will be not because we are perfect, or even good, but because he has “made” us perfect, as we hear in the second reading.

God loves us not because of anything we have, are, or can do for him, but because he is love. If we do not realize this, we do not realize who we are and who God is.

This realization is what we call humility. The vice opposed to it is what we call pride.

“As long as you are proud you cannot know God,” says C.S. Lewis. “A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”

“Many are lofty and renowned, but to the humble the Lord reveals his secrets,” we hear in the first reading. It is not that God will not reveal his secrets to the proud, but that he cannot.

In the musical Annie Get Your Gun, Frank Butler wanted to give Annie his choicest possession – the silver medals he had won for shooting. However, Annie had nowhere to put them; her own chest was already covered with gold medals.

Insofar as we think we can do without God, we are in the same boat. There is nothing God can do for us; we have nowhere to put his gifts. However, if we are meek, God can give us the earth; if we mourn, he can comfort us; if we hunger and thirst for righteousness, he can fill us.

In our old age, God often makes us dependent on others. It must be his way of giving us the gift of humility – perhaps our last chance.

“We must not think pride is something God forbids because he is offended at it, or that humility is something he demands as due to his own dignity – as if God himself was proud,” Lewis says.

“He wants you to know him: wants to give you himself. And he and you are two things of such a kind that if you really get into any kind of touch with him you will, in fact, be humble – delightedly humble … He is trying to make you humble in order to make that moment possible.”

Humility is a virtue we have to work at, for our appreciation of who we are and who God is does not stay with us long; we have to remind ourselves of it continually.

Lewis says that the first step is to recognize our own pride and conceit. “If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed,” he says.

Father Hawkswell will again be teaching the Catholic Faith in Plain English free of charge every week starting Sept. 15 at the John Paul II Pastoral Centre (33rd & Willow, Vancouver), 2 to 4 p.m.; Sept. 16 at St. Anthony’s Church (2347 Inglewood, West Vancouver), 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.; Sept. 16 at the John Paul II Pastoral Centre, 7 to 9 p.m.; and Sept. 17 at St. Clare’s Church Hall (2888 Delahaye Drive, Coquitlam), 7 to 9 p.m.