October 31, 2015
Saturday
30th Week in
Ordinary Time
1st reading: Romans
11.1-2a, 11-12, 25-29
Gospel: Luke 14:1, 7-11
One Sabbath Jesus had gone to eat a meal in the house of a leading Pharisee, and he was carefully watched.Jesus then told a parable to the guests, for he had noticed how they tried to take the places of honor. And he said, “When you are invited to a wedding party, do not choose the best seat. It may happen that someone more important than you has been invited, and your host, who invited both of you, will come and say to you: ‘Please give this person your place.’ What shame is yours when you take the lowest seat!“Whenever you are invited, go rather to the lowest seat, so that your host may come and say to you: ‘Friend, you must come up higher.’ And this will be a great honor for you in the presence of all the other guests. For whoever makes himself out to be great will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be raised.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
Are you good at riddles? Try this: “I sit tall but stand small, I turn around to find a place on the ground to fall. Who am I?” Any clue to the answer cannot include human beings since humans are tall standing but short sitting down. The correct answer, in fact, is dog. It’s taller sitting but shorter standing on its four legs. Nice lesson on humility! It is when we stand small before men that we sit tall in God’s kingdom.
Apropos of humility is my experience while flying from Rome to the Philippines. We had just attended the canonization of St. Pedro Calungsod. Seated near me during the flight was an elderly man who coughed now and then. Each coughing angered an aristocratic woman seated in front of him. “Hey old man, do you cover your mouth when you cough?” she asked. To which the man humbly answered, “Yes, I just did”. He even apologized.
The next time the man coughed the woman ceremoniously took a mask similar to those used during SARS outbreak from her Louis Vuitton bag and wore it to dramatize her disgust. Less than an hour later, someone was going to the bathroom and, seeing the old man, bowed low to kiss his hand. Only then I realized he was wearing a bishop’s ring. No he was not an ordinary bishop, but the former President of the CBCP. Sometime later he became a Cardinal.
In the eyes of God, greatness lies in one’s capacity to stoop low. Jesus guaranteed this greatness when he promised that he will elevate the humble and he will humble the great. This promise comes with an assurance of heaven whose door, like a dog house, can only be accessed by people who stoop low. – Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email: dan.delosangeles@gmail.com. Website: www.frdan.org.
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