August 31, 2025: Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 14: 1, 7-14
On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely.
When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, `Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, `Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
He said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous”.
I have never forgotten the story of Robert Coles, who as a young medical student went to see Dorothy Day at a Catholic Worker House to seek guidance on his path in life. He had to wait to see Dorothy as her attention was being taken by a drunken woman. Eventually Dorothy excused herself, came over to Coles and asked, “Are you waiting to talk one of us?” This story speaks to me of Dorothy’s profound humility and lack of self-importance.
Humility is a virtue not easily attained. When it is achieved, it is done so often as the result of great suffering, hence the quote “Pride Goeth before a Fall” from Proverbs 16:18. I think that sometimes, when people try to make themselves more important than others, this is done as a result of insecurity or lack of self esteem. The ironic thing is that externals do not make a person great.
In today’s gospel from Luke, Jesus cautions dinner guests against choosing the places of honor at a banquet, because in God’s eyes no one is more important than another. To try to set oneself apart as special is to disrupt our being in right relationship with others. Jesus further reminds us of the love that God has for ALL people by encouraging his host to invite as dinner guests “the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind” (Luke 14:13) “because they cannot repay you” (Luke 14: 14). Here Jesus is making a connection between humility and pouring oneself out, in love, to others. Seeing ourselves as being on a par with others softens our hearts and enables us to see and better respond to their needs.
What needs healing in our lives so that we are not like the disciples in today’s gospel who sit at the place of honor at a banquet only to be asked to move? St. Therese of Lisieux had these words on humility: “The memory of my faults humbles me; it causes me never to rely on my own strength, which is but weakness, but especially it teaches me a further lesson of the mercy and love of God.” We can be grateful that even those ways in which we fall short are opportunities for growth because of God’s infinite love and grace.