22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
St. Mary Queen of Heaven Parish, Georges Hall - 28 August, 2010
St. Mary's Cathedral, Sydney - 29 August, 2010
Ecc 3:17-20, 28-29; Heb 12:18-19, 22-24; Lk 14:1, 7-14
+ Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
28 Aug 2010
Today's gospel shows that Jesus regarded humility as important and the Old Testament book of Ecclesiasticus, belonging to their Wisdom literature insists that all of us, especially the powerful must behave humbly if we wish to find favour with God.
The ancient pagan Greeks did not regard humility as a virtue, although many of their dramas show that they recognized the devastating consequences of arrogance and pride.
There is a lot of tension today between the advertised goals of our individualist, free enterprise society with its exaltation of competition (whether it be for sports prizes or a few jobs with unbelievable salaries) and the Christian virtue of humility.
At first glance there could also be some tension with the way we think and act in everyday life. Thanks be to God that the days are gone when children were taught to be seen and not heard. I suppose there were such days here, at least to some extent. But from the first born children of the first settlers, the "currency lads and lasses", who were taller than their parents, confident and out spoken, Australians were not too much under the thumb! Today good parents and teachers work consistently to build up the self-confidence of youngsters and regret it when a child cannot speak up and look after him or herself. Is a happy self-confident child humble? Not always, because children are naturally self-centred, and need to be encouraged through love and example to think of others. We also recognize the occasional child who is too full of him or herself, wants always to be the centre of attention and disregards the rights of others. Such a child does lack humility. Sadly we all know adults like this too!
On the other hand it is a sadder fact that for every youngster who is big headed, we find four or five (or nine or ten) who are lacking in self-esteem, radically short of a proper self confidence. This is a bigger problem.
It might come as a surprise to learn that the great North African theologian St. Augustine, who died in 430, wrote "tota Christiana religio humilitas est"; i.e. the whole of the Christian religion is humility; while the Italian St. Benedict, who was born fifty years after Augustine's death, and was the founder of Western monasticism (and the Benedictines who provided our first two bishops) wrote about the twelve degrees of humility in the Rule he wrote for his followers. I think it would be true to say that this is not much quoted in today's business manuals!
Before we spell out the elements in Christian humility, we might begin with the definition given by St. Thomas Aquinas, who saw humility as a moral virtue by which we did not overreach ourselves and recognized our limitations. In other words humility is closely related to truth, to recognizing the truth about ourselves and others; but it goes much further than that.
Christians generally accept that there are four cardinal virtues: justice, prudence, fortitude i.e. courage and perseverance; and temperance or moderation. Humility is one aspect of temperance, because it restrains exaggerated ambition and self-esteem while avoiding self-abasement, such as exaggerating our weakness to fish for compliments, or genuinely refusing to recognize our strengths. Genuine humility means moderation and modesty in our self understanding. Churchill once said of a political opponent that he was a modest man with much to be modest about. Such a claim showed that Churchill was not excessively humble.
One essential mark of Christian humility is the explicit recognition of the fact that God is God, the Lawgiver, as well as Creator and loving Father. We have obligations to the one true God and we have no warrant to rewrite His rules to suit ourselves. The hallmark of Satan was that he refused to serve, and a good deal of contemporary obfuscation on conscience, even among Christians, is designed to obscure the fact that some want to be autonomous like their secular peers and rewrite whole sections of moral teachings according to modern understandings.
Humble people are also courteous, regularly striving to act with gentleness in our daily living, so that we curb our inclinations to pride, that evil growth which can take root in each one of us as the author of Ecclesiasticus explained. Habits of courtesy are particularly useful when we feel grumpy or when we feel insulted or hard done by. Courtesy is one of the best outer defences as we strive to acquire genuine humility.
Humble people are not required to sacrifice their Christian convictions; nor are they required to be doormats, to acquiesce to every contrary worldly opinion. Genuinely humble people are often strong forces for faith and goodness, not just because of the integrity of their example, but because they cannot be blown or knocked off course through ambition, flattery or abuse.
An exaggerated and false view of oneself is the direct opposite of humility. I remember an American psychologist explaining that the two groups in the U.S.A. then with the highest self-esteem were prisoners in the jail system and some of the long-term unemployed in one of the racial groups. Their view of themselves was divorced from reality.
Humble people also recognize their own sinfulness, without dwelling on it neurotically, as they also recognize the more important truth that God loves them. Because they know God loves them, humble people will also ask God's forgiveness.
Nor do humble people just look after their own, people who can return their favours. Their active sympathy is wider than this. This is the point of Jesus' small parable today about feeding those who cannot return the kindness.
May we all continue to strive for Christian Humility.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
