August 28, 2016 22nd
Sunday in Ordinary Time Gospel Reading: Lk 14:1, 7-14
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.”Jesus also addressed the man who had invited him and said, “When you give a lunch or a dinner, don’t invite your friends, or your brothers and relatives and wealthy neighbors. For surely they will also invite you in return and you will be repaid. When you give a feast, invite instead the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind. Fortunate are you then, because they can’t repay you; you will be repaid at the Resurrection of the upright.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the
Assimilated Life
Experience)
There is more power in humility than in any human reign, clout, dominion or sovereignty. Humility, not clout or dominion or sovereignty, reduced God to a mere human being. The same humility led this God-made-man to undergo the worst suffering available to the least of all humans. Humility is the only power that can “subdue” God.
Jesus grabbed every opportunity to emphasize the importance of humility. In today’s gospel we find him reacting to the behavior of people who outdid one another in securing for themselves places of honor at a banquet. He also made humility a major requisite in discipleship. He said, “You must deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me”.
How can a proud person deny himself when he believes he is the center of the universe? How can a proud person take up his cross when he thinks God owes him a good life for being righteous? How can a proud person follow Christ when he believes in no one else but himself? No true discipleship happens to the proud. As the First Reading puts it, “We cannot be open to God’s grace unless we put aside our pride.”
Humility makes discipleship genuine. Genuine discipleship catapults one to heaven. There must be so much power in humility, a power that saves. –(Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM, MMExM, MAPM, REB. Email: dan.delosangeles@gmail.com.
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