Saturday of the Thirtieth Week of Ordinary Time

posted in: Homilies, Ordinary Time | 0

Today’s readings

When we are deeply concerned about our own needs, our own prestige, our own honor, we often end up falling into a pit.  Because that kind of thinking is its own kind of blinder.  We can’t see past all that to notice the greatness of God, and to rejoice in what he is doing.

Pride has us looking in all the wrong directions.  What we need to look to is the host of the party.  Then we can rejoice and give honor and glory to God, who deserves all of our praise.  Then we can see and delight in the good things he is doing in our lives and in the life of our community and our world.

Humility frees us up to see God’s work in us.  It allows God to call us to a higher place, perhaps even a higher place than we would have, and certainly could have, on our own.  Humility is custody of the eyes: instead of looking where we should not look, we look instead to ourselves, into our own hearts.  And there we see three things.  First, we see our own sins, woundedness, brokenness, imperfections and failings and we humbly ask for God’s help.  Second, we see the child God created us to be, and the beauty of that child, and return to our first longing which is to be with God himself.  And finally, we see God at work, creating and re-creating us, calling us to himself.

What we see in humility is always greater than what we see in pride.  But we have to be willing to take off those blinders that pride puts on us, and be ready to take the lower place.