Keep yourself carefully from setting your thoughts upon what happens in the community, and still more from speaking of it except to the proper person at the proper time. Nor should you ever be shocked or marvel at what you see or hear, but should try to keep your soul forgetful of it all. For if you want to ponder on all that happens you would always discover something amiss even if you lived among angels.
ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS
What God demands of us is not this or that; He demands everything.
PIERRE REVERDY TO JACQUES MARITAIN
If we are rushed for time, sow time and we will reap time. Go to church and spend a quiet hour in prayer. You will have more time than ever and your work will get done.
DOROTHY DAY 15 Days of Prayer With Dorothy Day
Nothing should be held true merely because it is eloquently expressed, no false because it sounds harsh upon the lips. And a thing is not true because rudely uttered, nor is it false because its utterance is splendid. I have learned from you that wisdom is like wholesome food and folly like unwholesome food: they can be set forth in language ornate or plain, just as both kinds of food can be served on rich dishes or on peasant ware.
SAINT AUGUSTINE Confessions
Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled,
and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.
Today’s readings convey a strong and uncomfortable message—the indispensable need for humility if we are to enter the Kingdom of heaven: humility as a human stance that pleases God because it allows room for him to enter our heart; humility as a trait that makes lovable the person who possesses it; and humility above all as an attitude that reflects Jesus’ own mindset and manner of life: Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart (Mt 11:29). It is helpful here to remember the group of significant English words with which “humility” shares the same root hum-, namely: humus, human and humor. Why do these words belong together? What links them is a clear-eyed realism about ourselves, hinting that we should always prefer staying close to the soil from which we were taken as a way of abiding in the truth, rather than flying too high for our own good on the wings of conceit, which will soon bring us crashing back to earth. When we laugh at ourselves, I’m sure, we always elicit a conspiratorial smile from God, whereas any form of pomposity offends God’s Heart and makes him worry grimly about our fate.
In the gospel, Jesus has been invited to dine (φαγεῖν ἄρτον, v. 1) at the house of a leading Pharisee, an occasion which Jesus’ mere presence mysteriously transforms into turns into a wedding banquet (εἰς γάμους, v. 8). As he reclines at table he feels the freedom to address, first, his fellow-guests, and then the host himself. He does not discourse abstractly about moral truth and the desirability of humility as a virtue: Jesus is no professor of moral theology! Rather, reading between the lines, we realize that, the whole time, Jesus is really speaking about himself, revealing his innermost Heart. Jesus is always revealing himself because, what he harbors in his soul, is nothing but the love and truth of the Father, and it was after all precisely to reveal the Father that he came. As the incarnate Word of God, he is not a teacher like other teachers, who point to truths “out there” somewhere in reason’s horizon. Instead, in every detail of his words and deeds, Jesus is always revealing to us the nature and Heart of God as these become visible and audible and graspable in his own person: I and the Father are one (Jn 10:30).
What Jesus reveals today in particular is the humility of God—beautiful, majestic, gentle and enthralling, seeking to convert our hearts to itself by enticing us to fall in love with such abiding kindness. Christ is the one who, even though he was “in the form of God”, nevertheless humbled himself, became man, and assumed the form of a slave to the point of sharing fully in our mortal human condition, even to death on the cross. This is the humility of God’s love, wellspring of all other humility. Christ is the one who, condescending to come to us at all, then proceeded to choose the last and lowest of all places among us, not primarily to “teach us a moral lesson in humility” but as if, truly, his love could be fully satiated only there—as if only in that last place he could fully reveal the splendor of God’s majesty. For Christ to be mediator of the new covenant, as we hear in Hebrews today, means that he did not redeem the world by a master-plan of superefficient, cosmic management. No: Christ redeemed the world by the power of a humility that led him to shed his own blood for us, and his blood speaks more eloquently than the blood of Abel. “In his self-humiliation,” writes von Balthasar in an unforgettable passage, “the Lord Jesus went so low that henceforth no one can ever fall, no matter how deeply, without falling into Jesus”.
Jesus is the one who, having lowered himself, was then lifted up by the Father, according to the spiritual law that he here proclaims: Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. And Jesus is the one who, in his own life, prepared a place of privilege for the poor and the little, the sick and the weak, the crippled, the lame and the blind. He delighted in speaking about the love and the nearness of God above all to those who had been cast aside by others. But let us note well that Jesus’ delight in so doing is not a case of noblesse oblige, as when the rich deign now and then to visit the slums and throw a few coins to the beggars. Jesus’ delight in the poor is not a show or a sham; it is the deeply genuine and subjective reality of his own interior being, because it comes precisely from the fact that Jesus as a matter of course numbers himself among the outcast and dwells there as in his natural habitat. In his own flesh he has experienced both the suffering and despair of the afflicted and the Father’s strength and consolation. In this experience he has given us the sole valid pattern of our salvation.
But what does humility look like in our own lives? Let’s first of all leave aside all artificial poses of unworthiness and theatrical self-abasement à la Sarah Bernhardt, because surely authentic humility never makes a show of itself and wastes no time on pretense. Humility, I would say, means to be perfectly content to be what God has made us to be, and to stay gladly at the precise place assigned to us by the Lord in our day-to-day existence, yet without being closed to further manifestations of God’s will. This is the honest and healthy renunciation of one’s own self-promoting will that the Gospel calls for. The greatest enemy of humility is compulsive ambition, jealousy and envy. At the practical level, furthermore, humility is being faithful to the particular task the Lord has entrusted to us, no matter how hidden and lack-luster, no matter whether we’re working with five talents or only a single one. Humility, quite simply, is knowing in our bones that we are not our own masters, and that therefore we do not belong to ourselves: that the deepest and most beautiful thing that we can be is servants of God, a title which ought to give us the greatest joy. Humility is also the wisdom of the person who values his or her own worth with precision, not aspiring to things that are too high or beyond one’s strength. Humility bows soberly to reality and doesn’t seek to escape it either in an upward or a downward direction, through the sham of pretense or a calculated show of abjection.
St Paul wrote to the Romans: Do not think of [yourselves] more highly than [you] ought to think, but think soberly, each according to the measure of faith that God has apportioned (12:3). Paul is here pointing out how humility is not self-humiliation or false modesty but, rather, being in harmony with the objective reality created in us by God, choosing to abide contentedly within our apportioned “measure of faith”.
The first in the Kingdom, says Jesus, will be those who were scorned as the last by human society. Even as self-proclaimed “followers of Christ”, we often find it normal to invite to our home (or to our friendship and intimacy) only persons to whom we are bound by ties of affinity and love, and those who have previously invited us and whose invitation we must reciprocate, as if we were paying back a debt or perhaps in the hope of being invited by them again… But Jesus, in his contrary teaching, is here obeying God’s (to us) strange and topsy-turvy logic. He reveals to us—yes, reveals, because this is so foreign to our native instincts—that the illogical logic of God can become a source of blessedness for us, too: Blessed indeed will you be [if you invite to your home the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind], because of their inability to repay you. Jesus expects from us an unconditional love and generosity that does not seek a reward. He is calling our hearts to practice a love such as he bestows on each of us, which communicates to us the power of loving with a like love, simply because it is through our love that God’s Kingdom spreads. Blessedness, according to the Gospel, consists in our participating in the mind, Heart and destiny of Jesus, who loved us unilaterally while we were sinners and enemies of God; Jesus, who bowed meekly to Judas in order to wash his feet, even though Judas was about to betray him; Jesus, who sought no earthly rewards, and did not attempt to force anyone to love him….
Finally, the kind of blessedness generated by this love derives from pure gratuity, from the joy of loving indiscriminately, “wastefully” even, based on the conviction that love is its own end, that (for the person who loves) love is its own reward. Such is the blessedness of loving as Jesus loves, the blessedness of the person who is free from the fear that he is going to lose something precious by loving, the indestructible bliss of the person whose only desired reward is being one more guest in God’s great wedding banquet in the Kingdom, no matter what his assigned place there or who his companions at table might be.
At today’s particular banquet at the home of this leading Pharisee, I have no doubt but that Jesus, while teaching this world-changing doctrine, was doing so sitting at the last place in the banquet hall, which he himself selected on entering, for there is nothing Jesus preaches which he is not himself already practicing. And it was precisely this position as least of all that conferred on Jesus unrivalled authority and freedom to communicate to us unforgettably the puzzling but always glorious and liberating ways of God.
And when we do fall, because we are weak or blind, then our courteous Lord touches us and encourages us and calls us; and then he wants us to realize our wretchedness and humbly take note of it. But he does not want us to remain in this state, nor does he want us to fret over our self-accusation, nor is it his will that we despair over ourselves; but he does want us to turn back to him with all speed. For he stands all alone and awaits us in sorrow and grief till we approach, and then he is quick to welcome us. For we are his joy and his delight, and he is our medicine and our life.
JULIAN OF NORWICH A Month With Julian of Norwich
The contemplative life becomes awfully thin and drab if you go for several days at a time without thinking explicitly of the Passion of Christ. I do not mean, necessarily, meditating, but at least attending with love and humility to Christ on the Cross. For his Cross is the source of all of our life and without it prayer dries up and everything goes dead.
THOMAS MERTON The Sign of Jonas
The eye of the heart must be healed, and all impurities within it cleaned out, if we are to see God. As God humbled himself by becoming flesh in the Incarnation, we must humble ourselves making ourselves available to God, by stripping away the distractions that obstruct us from loving him. In the Incarnation, Jesus Christ shared in the experience of being human, uniting the human and Divine, so that we might return to God.
ST. AUGUSTINE
During the time immediately before and quite sometime after my conversion I thought that leading a religious life meant giving up all earthly things and having one's mind fixed on divine things only. Gradually, however, I learned that other things are expected of us in this world. I even believe that the deeper someone is drawn to God, the more he has to "get beyond himself" in this sense, that is, go into the world and carry divine life into it.
ST. TERESA BENEDICTA OF THE CROSS The Hidden Life: Collected Works of Edith Stein
Be careful! Don't make your religion consist only of theoretical things. If a religion is lacking in works, it won't get you into the kingdom of heaven. The Lord has already said it: it is not the one who says Lord, Lord, the one who prays a great deal with beautiful prayers, who will enter the kingdom of heaven. It is rather the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. This is the true religion: not just remaining pure, but visiting widows and orphans. This is a biblical expression that means to concern yourself with those in need.
ST. OSCAR ROMERO Through The Year With Oscar Romero
If only we realized how we complicate life, when in reality it is so simple. All our troubles come from this: that we do not know how to seek God where He is. We seek him far away, and all the while He is quite close to us. In Him we live, and move and have our being. This is true from the natural point of view, but above all from the supernatural. God is the soul of our soul: that is, the Principal that gives it life. It is there that we must seek Him, and it is there we shall find him ‘without end’.
A CARTHUSIAN They Speak By Silences
To give oneself to God, recklessly forgetful of self, not to take account of one's own individual life to allow full room for divine life, this is the profound motive, the principle, and the end of religious life. The more perfectly it is carried out, so much the richer is the divine life that fills the soul.
ST. TERESA BENEDICTA OF THE CROSS Thoughts of Edith Stein
God and humanity are like two lovers who have missed their rendezvous. Each is there before the time, but each at a different place, and they wait and wait and wait. He stands motionless, nailed to the spot for the whole time…. The crucifixion of Christ is the image of this fixity of God.
SIMONE WEIL The Simone Weil Reader
Our greatest danger is not our sins, but our indifference. We must be in love with God. It is not so much to change what we are doing, but our intention, our motive. It is not sufficient that we refrain from insulting a person, we must love.
DOROTHY DAY The Catholic Worker, Jul/Aug 1943
We are told that for those children who grow up in an atmosphere of abuse, addiction or violence; hyper-vigilance becomes routine. You learn to be constantly on guard and attentive to protect yourself. An adult could lose control; something is likely to go wrong; the situation could become dangerous in a flash. You have to be ready for anything. You learn vigilance at an early age because vigilance means survival. My sisters and brothers, the vigilance Our Lord invites us into this morning, is something quite different, far more benign, luxuriant and quite spacious, born of a deep confidence in God’s love for us. We are invited to be mindful of the nowness of God’s presence with us. Jesus invites to live in this now of the kingdom – a place where God is in charge, disposing all things suaviter, as Aquinas will insist; suaviter means that he is arranging everything gently, lovingly, smoothly. For if, as we believe, the kingdom will come to fullness in the age to come, Jesus’ plea is for us to believe and live within the reality that it is happening even now and that it can flourish only if we attentively allow God in. The “unexpected hour” is now; the Lord is coming toward us.
It is always worth waiting for someone you love. And as monks we’re made to live with that kind of expectation. Somehow our praying is our waiting, a constant vigil of the heart. It’s what we came for. And with loving expectation, the waiting is perhaps its own reward. We’re meant to live in incessant vigilance for Someone who is supremely worth our waiting. “Be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding,” Jesus tells us this morning.
For he is like that master returning home at a very late hour from a wedding feast. Perhaps a bit tipsy with the wine that was in ample supply. He knocks at the door. And he’s so delighted at being welcomed at that late hour, that he giddily tells his servants (that’s us) to sit down. And in an amazing reversal, he our master waits on us. And it’s not just a light late-night snack but an all-out feast. He sets the table and invites us to recline. (That’s a signal word, for in Jesus’ day, reclining was only for banquets, daily meals were taken seated at a table.) The message is clear: God's promised One is here to feed his people with as much as they want. Jesus is presiding at the banquet in the kingdom.
And then in thinly coded language, Jesus goes on to insinuate that he is like a thief, a real sneak. “Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour when the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.” He wants to break in. Having your house broken into means literally in the Greek, having it “burrowed through.” For in the Palestine of Jesus’ day, walls were made of mud bricks, and to break in all a thief had to do was dig through the wall. The message: Jesus is sneaking around trying to stage a break-in. He wants to come near; he’s trying to burrow through the thick wall of our resistance. That’s pretty sturdy material alright, and Mercy himself wants to blast right through, invade our space and suffuse it with his gracious presence.
Vigilance is essential for us because the mystery of God’s presence is constantly revealed even as it is hidden. Jesus is always reversing things, trying to engage us in unexpected ways. Attentiveness is our way of being in the kingdom, because then with the eyes of faith, all of reality can become increasingly transparent to the surprising beauty of One who is always advancing toward us.
And in the end it seems to me, we are left with the greatest reversal of all – for it is God in Christ who is always waiting for us. He wants to wait on us, redeem us, unburden us. The question: Am I willing to bear in peace, the discomfort of being served so tenderly by Christ Jesus, as I come to see more and more clearly each day that as a sinner and a “repeat offender” I do not deserve such loving regard?
Thank God, it’s never been about what we deserve, or we’d all be in big trouble. Didn’t we learned that from the parable of the Prodigal Son? Remember that resentful older brother in the parable. He knows that his younger runaway brother does not deserve to be welcomed but disowned and punished for his disrespect and betrayal. And you know what, he’s absolutely right. But the Father doesn’t see it that way. The best robe, new shoes, the fatted calf, music and dancing; that’s what the Father wants. It makes no sense. But he’s been so very heartbroken, waiting and waiting for that boy to come back. And when he catches sight him, he runs out, panting, unembarrassed and heedless of losing his dignity; he hugs and kisses this lost son, burying his dear old face in the boy’s unwashed neck. My brothers and sisters, it’s never been about what we deserve. God is not fair. He is pure love, unrelenting, unmanageable, giddy with his joy over us his children. He is the one who waits; he will not stop loving, longing, and waiting, always waiting for us to come back to him, so he can serve us. It makes no sense. It’s not supposed to. Love makes no sense.
This is why we return here over and over- to let him wait on us. Liturgy means service, and it is first of all God’s service of us. Jesus has come to serve not be served. This is why we gather here. The divine Thief is always on the prowl; the Master is at the door. And so we open to him and with deep gratitude and humility we somehow have the sense to let go of our awful reserve and revel in our undeservedness and allow him to feed us with his best and most perfect gift.
God is Almighty. But what is his power? It is the All-Powerlessness of Calvary that reveals the true nature of the All-Power of the infinite Being. The humility of love is the key: to show off, there was little need of power; to efface oneself one must be very powerful. God is unlimited power of self-effacement.
FRANÇOIS VARILLON The Humility and Suffering Of God
You do not save your soul as you might save a treasured possession. You save it as you lose a treasured possession: in surrendering it. We must save ourselves collectively, we must arrive together before the good Lord. What would he say if we arrived before him, came home to him, without the others?
CHARLES PÉGUY
The most important thing you can say about God's love is that God loves us not because of anything we've done to earn that love, but because God, in total freedom, had decided to love us. At first sight, this doesn't seem to be very very inspiring; but if you reflect on it more deeply this thought can affect and influence your life greatly. We are inclined to see our whole existence in terms of quid pro quo. We assume that people will be nice to us if we are nice to them; that they will help us if we help them; that they will invite us if we invite them; that they will love us if we love them. And so the conviction is deeply rooted in us that being loved is something you have to earn. In our pragmatic and utilitarian times this conviction has become even stronger. We can scarcely conceive of getting something for nothing. Everything has to be worked for, even a kind word, an expression of gratitude, a sign of affection.
HENRI NOUWEN In My Own Words
In order to have the strength to contemplate affliction when we are afflicted, we need supernatural bread.
SIMONE WEIL Gravity and Grace
The past casts its shadow over the present whenever we brood about old failures and yesterday's choices. Of course we should ask God's forgiveness for our faults and should learn from them where appropriate. But once we've said we're sorry and meant it, that is enough. While seeking to make amends where possible for the harm we have caused, most of the time we should simply leave things in God's hands, trusting him to put everything right. We must put a stop to attitudes or thoughts that keep us from living trustingly in the present moment.
JACQUES PHILIPPE Interior Freedom
So every day God works with us, calling us to repentance: “Oh that today you would hear his voice: Harden not your hearts…" (Ps 95:7-8). God speaks in various ways. He speaks through his Word, through the people with whom we live, through all sorts of circumstances, joyful and painful. We dread the latter especially. We know all too well that God has something to say to us in affliction, sickness, death or misfortune. If we still sense this fear in our heart, it is because as yet we have eyes only for the wrath of God, and this means we have not yet discovered how, behind the external signs of wrath, his immeasurable love is concealed.
ANDRÉ LOUF Tuning Into Grace
I have noticed that when we are very careful to mortify and humble ourselves in everything, we sometimes become depressed and less ready to serve God. This is a temptation which we can conquer by thinking that God only asks these things of us through love. We should aim at humbling ourselves to please God as a good friend tries to please his friend, or a son his father. There must be no constraint but a holy liberty of spirit, for this liberty is one of the best signs of true love. It is easy to do things which we know will please one whom we love.
ST. CLAUDE DE LA COLOMBIÈRE
When the disciples ask him to teach them to pray, Jesus does not offer method or technique. “I like to sit quietly in a deserted place, focus on my breathing, and simply relax…” No. He tells them to say something. Speak. “Say, Our Father…” Jesus the beloved Son teaches us that we are as he is, children of a loving, attentive Father. And if Jesus’ opponents often expressed shock and outrage that he dared to call God his very own Father, thus making himself equal with God. It is perhaps little less shocking that he advises us to pray as he prayed. Jesus places us within his relationship with God, a relationship marked by tenderness and confidence.
And so each morning, at his command and formed by his divine teaching, we dare to say these words, to repeat Jesus’ own words. So accustomed to praying the Our Father, do we believe that we are doing something really daring? The prayer is not a formula but more a “shape, a pattern,” better still a situation. For when we pray the Our Father, we are situated with and in Jesus, thus intimately connected with God. We too are beloved children, and so we dare to pray with real confidence.
And after naming God our Father, a series of petitions follows. In the first place we ask that God’s name be sanctified. This hallowing of God’s name expresses the ancient desire that all people be gathered into one and given a new heart filed with God’s Spirit, so that all nations may witness God’s blessings and so reverence God’s name. There then follow a further series of petitions: for the coming to birth of God’s reign of true shalom, then for bread, for forgiveness, not to be led into temptation and to be delivered from evil. We are putting demands on God, as we depend on his initiative.
And if in another place Jesus will tell us not to babble on in prayer “as the pagans do,” assuring us that God knows our needs before we speak, here he tells us to ask. Tell God what you want. And to amplify the message, Jesus will follow with a parable of a desperate friend who comes at midnight. Could God be at least as responsive as that grouch, unhappily roused from his sleep by the persistent knocking and entreaty of a friend at midnight?
And it’s just what Abraham does in the First Reading with his relentless deal-making with God. There’s such tension in that passage, for even as Abraham is reverent and respectful as he repeats his requests, you fear God will suddenly lose his patience, get ticked off and tell Abraham, “Enough already.” But God does not.
Could it be that God wants to be entreated so insistently? Apparently so because he continues to comply with Abraham’s persistent pleading. And it seems Abraham knows his relationship with God can tolerate it. Perhaps we could even say that the relationship demands it. Abraham has chutzpah, that’s the Yiddish word derived from the original Hebrew, meaning nerve, audacity. It’s daring and in-your-face..
This is just what Jesus emphasizes in that parable of the persistent friend this morning. The friend who just won’t back down and keeps knocking. That’s chutzpah. The actual word used in the parable is the Greek a-nai’-daya; it means shameless persistence, refusing to take no for an answer. Could Jesus be telling us that our relationship with a loving Father God demands such chutzpah?
It brings to mind that little widow demanding her rights from the corrupt judge. “Because this widow keeps bothering me,” he says. “I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come back and hit me with her handbag.” Or that Syrophoenician woman. “Alright,” she says to Jesus. “Call me a dog if you want, but even the dogs get the scraps. Give me a scrap.” It’s all about persistence and a faith that asks for more.
Prayer can never be a time for ambivalence but daring desire. A great confidence, audacity grounded in our belovedness. The relationship that prayer is puts us in our place as sons and daughters of a loving Father who wants to hear. As children of our Father we know our incompleteness, our utter dependence on him for everything, and so we ask.
I am reminded of my first retreat. First meeting, I sit across from the director, and he advises me to tell the Lord what I want, what is my deepest desire, in my heart of hearts. “Oh no,” I assure him. “I’ve read a lot of Thomas Merton books. He says you don’t do that, you just trust and open your heart, and you know, you pray.” “That’s great,” says this priest. “I love Merton. Read a lot of his books myself. Terrific author. Now go tell God what you want and get back to me tomorrow morning.” I did. Things happened. For when we acknowledge our deepest desires, we step into God’s desire for us. For he wants our good. In our prayer we are not trying to wrestle God to the ground. We beg earnestly, with chutzpah and we trust his desire for us.
Our prayer even at its most apophatic, in its greatest simplicity and deepest imageless quietude, no matter how far beyond words and concepts is always grounded in our deepest desiring. Ultimately we seek union, the consummation of our relationship to God, that Jesus assures us is ours in our Father. Joyfully falling backwards into the Father’s attention, into the Spirit’s groaning on our behalf, into the Son’s ceaseless pleading for us, we surrender. Jesus is the Father’s best gift to us, the Heart of all desire, let us go up again to this altar to receive him our Daily Bread.
When you are praying, don't rack your brains to find words. On many occasions the simple, monotonous stammering of children has satisfied their Father who is in heaven. Don't bother to be loquacious less the mind is bewildered in the search for words. The tax-collector gained the Lord's forgiveness with a single sentence, and a single word charged with faith was the salvation of the robber. Loquacity in prayer often fills the head with foolish fancies and provokes distractions. Brevity on the other hand (sometimes only one word is enough), in general favours recollection.
JOHN CLIMACUS Stairway to Paradise, 28
Love makes us free if it is selfless, and it is selfless if it is ready to sacrifice pleasure, advantage and independence for the sake of the beloved. And since no earthly love is initially perfect, it must go through these purifications. Moments and times must come when love is tested through sacrifice, when it becomes clear whether the enthusiasm of the first encounter was love at all, when the naïve first love—if it really was love—is refined and deepened in the fire of renunciation.
HANS URS VON BALTHASAR Prayer, 128
The beginning of the path of life is continually to exercise the intellect in the words of God, and to live in poverty. For when a man waters himself with one, it aids in the perfection of the other. That is to say, to water yourself with the study of the words of God helps you in achieving poverty, while achieving freedom from possessions affords you the time to attain to constant study of the words of God. But the help provided by both of them speedily erects the entire edifice of the virtues.
ST. ISAAC THE SYRIAN Ascetical Homilies, 1
Conversion always means a break with the past and an entry upon a new world. In no way does conversion constitute a stopping-place; nor does it bring the repose and satisfaction of a goal attained. Faith is never ready-made and finished. Our knowledge continually needs to be renewed. The life of faith always demands an active fidelity.
YVES DE MONTCHEUIL, SJ
If you want to pray, you need God, who gives prayer to one who prays.
EVAGRIUS OF PONTUS On Prayer, 59
It is Jesus you seek when you dream of happiness; he is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; he is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is he who provokes you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is he who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is he who reads in your hearts your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be grounded down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.
POPE JOHN PAUL II
No one is to pursue what he judges better for himself, but instead, what he judges better for someone else. RB 72.7
Today’s Gospel is situated in the midst of Jesus’ final discourse to his disciples at the Last Supper. By this point in the meal, Jesus has alluded to his coming Passion, saying to them at the opening, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer…” (Lk 22:15), he has instituted the Eucharist in the offering of bread and wine, and he has just revealed that he is to be betrayed by one them at table with him. With this news, the disciples begin to question one another, “asking which of them it was that would do this.”
Jesus had warned them of his coming passion, saying in his second passion prediction back in chapter nine, “Let these words sink into your ears, for the Son of man is to be delivered into the hands of men” but, as the narrator tells us, “…they did not understand this saying, and it was concealed from them, that they should not perceive it; and they were afraid to ask him about this saying.” (Lk 9:44-45).
Now it appears that the inconceivable, that God’s anointed should suffer at the hands of men, is not only a possibility but an imminent reality that is now pressing down upon them. Moreover, this evil will be initiated not from some obvious and external enemy but as a deliberate act of betrayal from within their own company.
They look about the room at one another, as people whose personal and communal sense of identity has been thrown into confusion. The common reference points around which they have been accustomed to ordering their understanding of God, world, neighbor and God’s chosen people Israel have been upended, yet they have not yet grasped what is to be set up in its place. So they grasp about for something to hold on to.
At this point, our Gospel begins, “Then an argument broke out among them about which of them should be regarded as the greatest.”
With all these relationships in disarray from their point of view, they turn to one another, but now not like a community in process of formation by Jesus, but more like a group of individuals striving against one another in a futile attempt to reestablish order among themselves but from no other source than themselves. The Greek word, translated here as “argument” is “philoneikia” and appears only here in the NT. It means first of all “love of strife, contention” but it can also mean “love of victory”, “desire for glory”.
Succumbing to the “love of strife and contention”, they have separated themselves from the way of Jesus, which in its own right, is a love of victory and a desire for glory, but his victory is the victory of the Cross and his desire for glory is the glorification of the Father. His way is not that of strife and contention but of peace.
Jesus intervenes in order to steers the disciples back to his way, by placing it in contrast to worldly social models built on power and domination.
“Benefactor” was a common term in the surrounding Greek culture of the time that in the words of biblical scholar James Edwards, “identifies a widespread class of individuals of power, position and means who celebrated themselves and were celebrated by others in public places.” The apostles would have recognized this title immediately and as members of an oppressed class who suffered under these individuals would have been quick to disassociate themselves from this term and its implications.
In Jesus’ model, the greatest are to be as though they were the youngest, like a child in antiquity, one who has no status of his own. Or like a servant who places himself lower than those whom he serves, as though they were greater, like one who serves those who sit at table. This is the way of Jesus himself. He is among them as the one who serves.
The question for us this morning is how does St. Benedict help us in a practical way to be a community that faces its trials and difficulties, including the small ones of daily life, without succumbing to the human tendency to fall back on the way of strife and contention but walk the way of transformation with Jesus, the path to true victory and glory through humble service in the patience of the Cross?
I suppose we could say that the whole of his Rule that strives to bring this about. It’s basically its purpose. Be that as it may, I propose that a good entry point is the great chapter 72 of the Rule, The Good Zeal of Monks, and its presentation of the classical “two ways”.
The way of “philoneikia”, “argument”, would correspond to “the evil zeal of bitterness” that leads to hell, whereas the way of Jesus, humble service, would correspond to the good zeal, “which separates from evil and leads to God and everlasting life.”
We can get a better grasp of the content of this “good zeal” in all its fullness if we read this chapter backward from v. 11, that is, “Let them prefer nothing whatever to Christ”. For he is “good zeal”, it’s source, embodiment and full realization of all of the prescriptions in this chapter, which serves a kind of summation of the whole Rule.
“Zeal” indicates intense striving. Good zeal, St. Benedicts says, must be practiced with “ferventissimo amore”, the most ardent love. It is the soul that has been overtaken by this most ardent love that is able to drive out the promptings of evil zeal from the heart. The love of contention and strive that the apostles experienced we can arouse easily enough on our own, but this most ardent love for the good zeal that is Christ is a gift, always only the fruit of grace.
St. Benedict grounds the practice of this good zeal in chapter 12 of St. Paul’s letter to the Romans: They should each try to be the first to show respect to the other (Rm 12:10). This striving after mutual respect is a competition for a new kind of greatness in which everyone is raised up and that builds community. A greatness that is that is rooted in the dignity of the human person and his true status as being “in Christ.”
Many things could be said about each of the verses of this rich chapter, but I will conclude with v. 7, as a practical example of good zeal, which St. Benedict places at the center of Chapter and which Aquinata Bockmann claims is the goal toward which the whole of the Rule wishes to train us: “No one is to follow what he judges useful to himself, but what seems more useful to the other.”
To follow what I judge more useful to myself is to allow myself to be guided by ego-centric choices that may seem good to me and to my fulfillment and happiness, but do not actually have their origin in Christ and are thus exercised outside of him and place us at the margins of the community as his body.
It is matter of being habitually turned to the other in a self-forgetfulness that truly sees the other in the light of Christ and is ready to serve him in this light. It means seeing my brother not first of all as someone that needs to be changed according to some personal ideal but being open to seeing him in his uniqueness, in his mystery in Christ, as someone whose qualities, abilities, history and so on are different than mine. In him there is a ray of the divine glory that is to be discovered as well as the reality of what St. Benedict says in the next verse, weaknesses of body and character that are to be borne with the utmost patience.
This task is easier to the degree that each of us recognizes in himself his own weaknesses and need to be borne with with the utmost patience. For in some respect each of us is weak and each of us is strong. It is from this self-knowledge that we can genuinely see ourselves as lower than the others and look up to them. Here, it is helpful to recall the seventh step of humility: if we see ourselves as the least and believe it in our hearts it is quite natural to give honor to others.
Lastly, St. Benedict concludes this chapter with the words, “and may he bring us altogether to everlasting life.” The Lord leads us “all together”. When I love my brother with good zeal, I walk along with him at his side, at his pace, speeding up where I need to or slowing down where it is called for, always attentive to what is useful to him, and always mindful that it is “all together” and not simply as individuals that Christ is leading us to everlasting life.
St. Benedict shows us the path in service of the true king, Christ the Lord, victor over sin and death, who leads on to everlasting glory.
Let us pray that the Lord may bring about this mystery among us.