25th Sunday Year B - Homily 4

Homily 4 - 2021 

[The Twelve] had been arguing which of them was the greatest, so [Jesus] said, “If anyone wants to be first, he must make himself last of all and servant of all”.

How do you do that? The very fact of trying to be last can be motivated precisely by the desire to become more perfect. In the meantime, do you pretend you are?and act as though you were?

Jesus took a little child, set him in front of them, put his arms around him - and said to them, “Anyone who welcomes one of these little ones …, welcomes me.” Genuinely welcome a little child… I suppose there are not too many hidden agendas lurking there… [though recent experience has shown that with some people, priests sadly included, even that can have a terribly dark and devastating purpose.]

Jesus was simply using examples that meant something in his day. The important issue is, as always: What was he really getting at?

Jesus was talking, of course, about pride, and encouraging humility. But trying to be humble is problematic. I remember my first parish priest referring to what he used to call: “Humility with a hook!”

I have been thinking over this the last few days, and wondering… and then, the story we had at weekday Mass on Thursday morning came to mind. There, Luke wrote of a woman who, according to a Pharisee also in the story, had a “bad name in the town”. She came in uninvited to a meal that Jesus was having at the house of the Pharisee. She approached Jesus, knelt at his feet, and began to weep, crying uncontrollably. The host was utterly embarrassed. She just stayed there, crying… and crying — oblivious to everything else. Her tears fell on Jesus’ feet, and continued to fall. Eventually, she let down her hair, in public, and began to wipe his feet with her hair… in public. And then, Luke said, she “covered his feet with kisses”. Finally, she produced from somewhere an expensive alabaster jar of ointment and extravagantly set about anointing his feet with it. She just stayed there. Jesus seemed perfectly at peace with it all. The host was speechless.

What was going on? Well … the woman certainly was not concerned about whether she was “the greatest”,… about what impression she was making.

Jesus concluded that she must have just experienced, somehow, for the first time in her life, the unconditional forgiveness of God — and nothing else mattered for her, certainly not what others might be thinking of her. She was only too conscious that she deserved nothing. But for the first time in her life, she knew, deep down, that she was deeply loved — simply for who she was. Though she had had endless clients, she may never have known anyone who genuinely loved her — until then.

She had no problem whether others saw her, or with seeing herself, “last of all and servant of all”. She knew the overwhelming, utterly liberating, experience that she was forgiven. Everything else flowed from there. Humility with no hook!

The wonderful fourteenth century English mystic, Julian of Norwich, once wrote: “… We need to fall… By the simple fact that we fall, we shall gain a deep and wonderful knowledge of what God’s love means. Love that cannot, will not, be broken by sin, is rock-like, and quite astonishing. It is a good thing to know this. Another benefit is the sense of insignificance and humbling that we get by seeing ourselves fall… We have got to see this.”

I don’t think there is another way to genuine humility. We don’t acquire it by trying to get it, but simply by trusting, and forever exploring, God’s forgiveness in the face of our perennial propensity to sin.