Humility, Manners, and Vanity (22nd Week, Year C)

To listen to this homily, click here.

Readings are about humility

Lots of misconceptions about what humility is: last in line, denying praise, making compliments awkward or minimizing our gifts.

Sometimes we get a better sense of what something is by looking at what it is not. The opposite of humility is vanity. Vanity is the inordinate worry about how we appear to others.

It is ok and even good to be aware of how we come across to others and the impression we make. This awareness moves us to good habits like chewing with our mouth closed, having good hygiene, being able to converse politely with others and are not vanity. 

Story of Ms. Manners in seminary,

Manners were not to make us pretentious or fancy; manners are for others. A healthy self-awareness fosters respect and consideration for the people around us. It is a bridge to others and to God.

Vanity takes that introspection, which is supposed to make us more available and thoughtful to others and God, and makes it all about me….

So what does that look like?

I would offer four sure symptoms that each of us should look for in our life.

1. Everything is always about us: dominating conversations, oblivious to the feelings of others, failing to ask about them and actually listen, placing ourselves first whenever there is a conflict or a chance to compromise

2)   We are never wrong and always have an excuse for everything: 1st reading tells us that the wise love proverbs, in other words, the humble person is always learning. The fool is the one who can never be taught because he already knows everything out there. Even when he is wrong, he is right. In the spiritual life, it looks like this: the holy person wants to see their sins because then they can be forgiven and grow closer to God and others. The vain person refuses to acknowledge sin because they think it weakens them. But the way of Jesus is full of irony. The greatest in his kingdom become so by placing themselves at the service of others, the first are the ones who put themselves last and those who will live forever in glory are they who are willing to lay down their lives for truth and goodness.

3)    We care so much about what others think of us that it dictates how we act, the choices we make and the relationships we have. We change who we are to win the approval of others. We are often moral chameleons who appear one way in prayer or at church but then become someone else when we are around those whose approval we want. We live as a sort of double-agent; putting on a certain act or air, depending on who we are around. When we worry more about our reputation with others than our relationship with God and say no to the person we called to be, this is vanity!

4) The final symptom that often plagues us is that we try to hide our true selves from Jesus and gloss over how much we need him and his mercy. A common mistake in our time is thinking that God looks at us and says, “you are perfect just the way you are.” That he looks at us and sees nothing to be fixed, healed or saved. That no change is needed for redemption. Ah, but if that is true, why did he send Jesus to die on the cross? Why is confession one of the seven sacraments Jesus gave to the Church? Why do we begin each Mass by acknowledging our sins and the ways we have failed? Vanity makes us think too highly of ourselves and too little of our sinfulness. Once again, that irony rings true: if you want to receive God’s love and mercy, if you want to be healed and transformed, come before God as you really are, warts and all. Do not hide from him like Adam and Eve did in the garden! Anything less is vanity! God already knows how wounded we are and how badly we need him.

When you think about it, every healthy relationship depends on humility and is damaged by vanity. A person who is arrogant and vain can never be a good spouse, a good parent or a good friend. They are so full of themselves that they have no room for anyone else. A humble person makes a place for the other person. Sirach put it this way, "conduct your affairs with humility, and you will be loved more than a giver of gifts.”

Humility makes possible a relationship with other people. It also makes possible a relationship with God. There is a saying, "maintain your sanity by keeping two things in mind: First, God exists. Second, I am not him." To have a relationship with God, we have to stop trying to be God and accept our limitations. Faith cannot happen if we are not willing to become humble and trust in the Lord’s plan for us and for the world. How can God speak to us if we only listen to His messages that fit with our plans and desires? Many times we let our craving for control get the best of us and try to do things our way, according to our wisdom. How foolish that really is! It’s like saying to God, “step aside and let me show you how things are done.” This way of thinking and living always ends in disaster.

All of us need to let go of vanity in some way. We can easily see the arrogance and vainglory of others, but we have a harder time recognizing our own. We can either submit ourselves freely to these lessons and let God teach us through prayer, service to others, and learning more about him through Church teaching and Scripture. Or we can go the hard way getting humbled by our own pride and vanity as we inevitably discover the limitations of our own abilities and knowledge. For every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted."  

Desire for Fire (20th Sunday, Year C)

 To listen to this homily, click here.

A number of years ago, I had the opportunity to hike in Yosemite and Kings Canyon National Parks in California. One of the things I learned about the forests there was the important role fire plays in the health of the ecosystem. For a while, the national parks tried to prevent and suppress all fires, seeing them only as a destructive threat. In time, they came to understand that while fire had to be carefully managed and respected, it played a crucial role in making sure these forests remained healthy and primed for new life. 

I saw this as I walked through a number of areas that had recently burned. Although there was the unmistakable scar of charred trees and ash, there were also thousands of new saplings sprouting up because of the rich soil and the abundant sunlight. New life, rising right out of the ashes! I also learned that the majestic sequoia need fire to release their seeds. 

In both cases, fire is necessary, even as it destroys much of the forest. Without it, the long term good of the area would suffer and the longer it is suppressed, the worse it will be when it finally breaks out. Fire prepares the way for new, healthy trees to replace the ones that have reached the end of their life cycle and might be diseased. The flames also clear the needles, branches and other refuse off the forest floor and turns it from a stifling mess to a fertile bed for new saplings to spring up.

Today’s readings point us toward a spiritual fire that does something similar. In a shout-out to pyro’s everywhere, Jesus exclaims that he has come to set the world on fire and he wishes, (I love the word he uses) that it was already blazing! Not flickering, not a controlled burn, or a soft flame, but blazing!! Jesus goes on to explain the power of this fire. It is a force that will strengthen, cleanse, and prepare the way for new life. The teaching of Jesus also has the potential to divide even the most fundamental family relationships, depending on where they fall in terms of the gospel message.

I think it is helpful to point out some common mistakes we make when we hear this passage. The goal of the fire Jesus desires is not to cause fights between husband and wife, mother and daughter, Father and son, and anyone else near and dear to us; he does not delight in division. Jesus loves unity in the family and among people. But that unity can never come at the expense of truth. Whenever any of us try to achieve community and unity by compromising truth and distorting the teachings of Jesus, we only end up with an uneasy truce that will either dissolve over the next argument or require us to compromise our beliefs sometime soon in the near future when the next controversy arises.

Jesus’ prediction of discord and division on account of his preaching is not permission to be a jerk. Our lord is not telling us to go and pick fights with the people around us. Rather, he is warning us that to live his words, to follow him, will purify us and our relationships. And even those relationships most sacred to humanity may not be spared if the people closest to us choose to have other priorities ahead of the gospel. 

Last of all, Jesus is not telling us to write off people who fundamentally differ with our creed. Even though the pain and separation of belief may be massive, we should always continue reaching out to bring them back, without ever watering down the truth or compromising key elements of our faith. Jesus’ desire for fire is not permission to become an island and reject anyone who differs with us!

Being on fire for love of God will cause conflicts in our lives, even with the people we love the most. And when we encounter these conflicts, the resistance of those who don’t agree with the gospel, we have to make a decision: Do we change our tune, be silent, or stick with what we believe?

Take Jeremiah in the first reading. He was a prophet given one of the most difficult jobs in all of the Old Testament. He was to warn the people of God that they would soon be invaded by a foreign power, the temple destroyed, many would die and the rest would be enslaved and shipped off to another land. Not surprisingly, the people didn’t like his message and instead of hearing what he was saying and repenting and asking for God’s mercy, they tried to get rid of the messenger by throwing him in a cistern. They resisted the fire of God’s purification, painful though it would be, and as a result they were destroyed. Jeremiah, on the other hand, stayed true to his message from God, endured many sufferings and insults but is now venerated as a saint in heaven. In the second reading, the Author of the letter to the Hebrews reminds the early church that they are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses, the martyrs, who have already given their lives for the gospel. He also gently tells them to stop complaining about the sufferings they are encountering, since they have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood. This is a timely reminder to you and me, who are often afraid to witness to Jesus. Most often, the only cost will be something minor like embarrassment or being shunned; nothing close to the shedding of our blood! 

As Catholics, we are asked to keep the fire of Christ blazing in the world until he returns. We are called to promote and defend the truth as revealed by God and our human nature, unpopular truths that mostly seem to center around marriage, human sexuality, and the dignity of the human person. The truths of God that often divide families in our time are things like marriage cannot be defined as anything other than between a man and a woman, that our human sexuality is a gift rather than a commodity to be bought and sold nor is it a subjective identity that can be reconstructed any which way. We are called to defend the truth that every child has a right to be born without exception, that scientific research is not a god but must respect moral principles, never using or destroying human beings under the lie that it is for a greater good, and finally that contraception is something which corrupts married love rather than enhancing it. We are asked to be a voice for the voiceless, agents of justice and mercy in a world that often only cares about the bottom line and who it deems useful or worthy. 

If you haven’t noticed already, Catholics are charged with defending and promoting some pretty unpopular truths. People accuse us of being intolerant, hateful, evil, out-of-touch, and many other words I can’t say here in church. But Jesus knew this would happen and this is why he warned his apostles to be ready for pushback even from the folks they loved the most. To authentically live out our faith, we will at times be like Jeremiah: misunderstood, hated, cast out, and maligned.

So the question posed to us is this, “are we ready for this purification? Are we willing to endure the flame of God’s love which will burn away fear, selfishness, cowardice, and laziness? To be truly and fully alive in our catholic faith, we must undergo the fire of God’s purification. If we run from it, if we try to make our faith something that offends no one by watering it down, we will be like the alpine forest without a fire. Our souls will not experience the cleansing power of God or the new life that comes with it.

May we open our hearts to the fire of God’s love, that it might be blazing within us. Let us pray for the courage of Jeremiah to stand strong in the midst of rejection. Finally, let us not fear God’s purification because it will always lead to growth, new life, and eternal happiness, not simply for ourselves but also for many others!

The Fullness of Faith (19th Sunday, year C)

 To listen to this homily, click here.

I would imagine most of us have had the experience of going to a parish picnic here in St. Louis at some point in our lives. You know the type, with game booths, chicken dinners, and of course, carnival rides. As a child, I couldn’t wait to get on these flashy, metal marvels; as an adult my thoughts have become things like, “how recently did I update my will?”and “who is my emergency contact?” On several occasions, wanting to be the fun priest, I’ve allowed myself to get on some of the rides. Waiting for them to start, I have been moved to deep, philosophical thoughts, mostly involving faith. I can’t help but acknowledge the tremendous amount of trust I am putting in some latches, a lap bar, and two carnival workers named Bubba and Squawker, who man the controls and will be in a different city the next day. Now, don’t get me wrong, these thoughts didn’t stop me from being flung around and re-aligning my spine, but I think it can give us good reason to stop and ponder the role of faith in our lives.  

We practice some level of faith each and every day, even if we are not necessarily a religious person. It is impossible to function in any meaningful way without a basic trust in certain rules and norms. Think of the constant faith we put in all sorts of people and things. We trust the roads we travel on and the many different bridges we cross to be safe and stable. We have faith in in other drivers; that they will stay in their lane, stop at red lights and go in the proper direction of traffic. We trust that the money we receive at the store, from the bank, or from others is genuine and not counterfeit, That the lights will go on when we flip the switch and countless other examples. In other words, we make use of faith often, in little and large ways every day so we can be people who are happy, productive, and sane. Often we practice these sort of faith subconsciously, hoping for the best but not really sure of the ultimate result.

But this sort of faith and trust is an incomplete version of what we are called to and capable of in our relationship with God. The faith described in our second reading, displayed in the life of Abraham, shows us what is possible. For many of us, faith is simply what we believe, a sort of blind trust, something internal that lives mostly in our mind. How many times have we heard a politician or public figure mention their faith but then quickly qualify that it is separate from their decision-making and policy choices. Don’t we all have those moments where we believe one thing but project something different around others to avoid a heated discussion or an uncomfortable moment. 

Faith for the Christian is indeed what we believe; in a few moments we will profess the essentials in our creed. But it must also be external and apparent. It cannot remain hidden. A living faith shows itself in our actions and priorities. It is not a stagnant body of dogmas but a dynamic relationship with God and his Church. That means that it grows, changes, and deepens over time. Or at least it should!

This is why Abraham is our father in faith. He professed belief in God but then he also backed it up in his actions. When God said it was time to move to a foreign land, he did it. When God told him he would become a father as an old man, he believed. When God asked him to sacrifice his beloved son, he was even willing to let go of his most precious gift. What he believed and what he did were in perfect alignment!

Let us then look at our own faith and the choices we make. Does it match up with the actual decisions and priorities of our lives? Can someone look at our actions, our choices, and conclude that we believe in eternal life? Or would they see us completely focused on the here and now, consumed by materialism and greed, as if this life was the only thing that mattered? We may believe we love our family and treat others with dignity and respect. But if we seldom spend quality time with them because our work or our phone or our hobbies or personal comfort come first, what do we actually believe in? We might say we believe in the power of prayer and that God loves us and listens to us. But if we seldom pray and come to Mass, what then do we actually believe? It is not enough to simply believe in something; that belief must manifest itself in how we act and what we choose. We can go back to that beautiful summary of faith from our second reading, “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” That translation is pretty good but the word “realization” is not quite right. Instead, use pursuit. Faith is the pursuit of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” Ultimately, what we pursue is what we believe in. Can we honestly say that it is God and his kingdom? Or is it something else?

Last of all, faith is a relationship. Our faith in God is not simply a set of beliefs or a list of teachings, but ultimately trust in another person, a Divine person who is utterly dependable and loving. Like any other meaningful relationship, faith takes constant work and investment of ourselves. If we wish to have faith in God and in the things that matter to him, we must never stop learning more about him and what brings him joy. For many Catholics, their faith stopped developing after grade school, high school, or college and that relationship has grown stagnant. Fr. Mike Schmidt uses a great analogy; he says our faith is not a crockpot; we cannot just set it and forget it! Just as we work to grow in love for our friends and family every day, year after year, so too with God. We cannot say, “Lord, I already told you I loved you and trusted you before, why do I have to do it again and again?” Imagine if a husband said that to his wife! “I said I loved you on our wedding day and if anything changes, I will let you know.” This sort of thing doesn’t work with our human relationships and it won’t work with our spiritual ones either!

As we reflect on faith, let’s make sure we marvel at the fact that the God of heaven and earth wants a unique and personal relationship with each of us. No one is excluded from that friendship. What Abraham received from the Lord is offered to us as well. What makes that life-giving relationship possible is our faith, a faith that pursues what is hoped for and is yet unseen. May our faith be evident in our actions and choices and manifested in a friendship with God that is ever growing and deepening. Then we will look forward to Lord’s return, knowing that we will be counted as his good and faithful servants.