Breaking Open the Word - 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C
22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C - August 28th, 2022
This Sunday’s Scriptures invited us to examine ourselves on a very fundamental (and often very challenging!) virtue: humility. We opened our sharing by pondering just how radical a detachment from our pride Jesus asks of us. He urges us to serve those who cannot repay us – a truth often expressed in the phrase, “Do good without expecting reward.” However, a Sister pointed out that Jesus calls us to go a step further: not only are we to not expect a reward, we are actually to avoid it! We must take an active role by deliberately seeking out ways to serve without being repaid, whether by a return favor or just by recognition. The reason for this is not that repayment is bad in itself, but that we in our sinfulness tend to become selfishly attached to it. In order to correct this negative tendency of our fallen human nature, we need to “stretch” ourselves in the opposite direction to achieve balance. Pride is deeply ingrained in us, even tainting our good deeds, but our wise Divine Physician knows the best cure. We would do well to heed His advice!
“He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even to death, death on a Cross!”
But why, some may ask, is humility so important after all? The answer lies in our creation in the image and likeness of God. "Humble yourself the more, the greater you are," urges our First Reading, and the greatest example of this is God Himself. He is the ultimate Source of all things, the Unmoved Mover, “That than which nothing greater can be thought” (St. Anselm). Yet He is constantly lowering Himself to us and pouring Himself out in love. Dietrich Von Hildebrand once noted that we as human beings find humility threatening, because deep down we all know that we are vulnerable and insecure. We fear that, by “taking the lowest place,” we risk losing something of ourselves. But God, Who is all-powerful and infinitely secure in Himself, has no reason to fear that lowering Himself will do any harm to His integrity. In a high paradox, it is precisely His greatness that gives Him the freedom to “humble Himself” in such stunning ways as the Incarnation and the Passion (see Philippians 2)! The more we ourselves grow in our trust in God’s unchanging love, therefore, the more we find our security in Him and are able to resemble Him in His self-emptying for others.
We also discussed the powerful imagery of Mount Sinai and the Heavenly Jerusalem in the Second Reading. One Sister noted that it is unusual for the author of Hebrews to refer to Sinai as “that which could be touched.” Why is this unusual? Because in the episode here referenced (see Exodus 19), God declares this mountain essentially “untouchable” – even an animal that approaches it is to be stoned to death! However, Hebrews’ description of this episode brings out an important truth: the Old Covenant was manifested primarily in signs that were accessible to the senses. You could touch Sinai, even if you wouldn’t live to do so twice! But in the New Covenant, God calls us to surpass what we can perceive with our earthly eyes and ears, or touch with our human hands.
Through Him, with Him, and in Him …
Physical signs certainly remain a part of Christian worship – the Sacraments, for example – but they are meant to point beyond their visible aspects to the invisible reality of the Kingdom of God. “[We] have approached” the heavenly realm, even here on earth. The Kingdom has “already and not yet” come, and nowhere is this clearer than in the Mass. Jesus really and truly becomes present on the altar, and we are really and truly united to the worship in Heaven; yet the “veil” of sign and symbol remains, only to be torn away on the day we depart this life to be with Christ. What an awesome reality to remember every time we approach the Eucharist!