September 01, 2019 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time First Reading: Sir 3:17-18, 20, 28-29 Second Reading: Heb 12:18-19, 22-24a 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)
Today’s Gospel reading is a lesson on humility. If you think there is little power in humility, think again. It was humility that reduced God to a human being, and with the same humility he suffered like he was least among humans. Humility is the only power recognized by God.
Humility is the power behind true discipleship. Jesus’ major requirements to his disciples were self-denial, the taking up of their cross, and the following of Him as Lord and Master. All three require humility. Without humility, self-denial is self-righteousness, the taking up of one’s cross, stoicism, and the following of Christ hypocrisy.
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 good and righteous? How can a proud person follow Christ when he believes in no one else but himself? No true discipleship happens to a man who is proud. As the First Reading puts it, “We cannot be open to God’s grace unless we put aside our pride.”
If humility is the key to genuine discipleship, then there must be so much power in humility, a power that saves. – (Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., D.M.
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