Fullerton T

22nd Sunday of ordinary time

This Sunday we celebrate the 22nd^rSunday of Ordinary Time. This is a time for new beginnings with the youngsters going back to school or college next week and their  parents breathing a big sigh of relief that the long holidays are now at an end. Many of us have the feeling that time is passing by so very quickly and it seems like a blink of an eye since the end of June when the schools and colleges closed.The  readings  for this Sunday are all about humility, a virtue that doesn’t seem to be valued that much in our world. These days, it’s all about how many “friends” we have on Facebook, how many followers we have on Twitter. But for all of today’s technology we can still pick up on someone whose humility is done for show, whose humbleness is not the real thing and there are people like that around and about. Humility is about: being real, being grounded. Accepting and sharing our gifts as well as acknowledging our  faults.

We thank God for all the things that he has given to us It is his grace that produces the right attitude within us to live in a humble way. This  involves the giving of one’s time, talent, and money for the common good without thought of personal gain.  In this Sundays  Gospel Jesus is at a meal in the house of one of the leading Pharisees. He has noticed an undignified scramble for the places of honour and is moved to comment on what he sees. When a guest arrives early at a feast to appoint himself a place of honour, his position is insecure because he runs the risk that a later guest will have more claim to his place. And when the host insists that he vacates the place, he will have to pass all the other places already occupied and take the lowest place.  Jesus advises that his listeners take the lowest place at table – then the only risk they run is that of being exalted! Since it is the host’s party, he should decide who sits where. When Jesus addresses his host he advocates a more radical style: learning humility not so much by playing musical chairs at banquets, but by associating with “the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind”.

The guest list for Jesus’ feast is a parable of the kingdom: God is the host whose delight is to feast with those who are always overlooked in a society that scrambles for honour and the best places at the table.  St. Augustine once said, “Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues; hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance.” Real humility takes awareness and acceptance of our real selves with all the aspects of our lives both good and bad that is why humility is so hard for us to achieve. May we be the Humble people that we are called to be accepting our real selves so that that we may use our  God given gifts wisely in the service of others.