Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

My homily from last Sunday:

Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time

          Sometimes children’s stories can teach us a lot about life.  Sometimes they can even teach us about something we need to know for eternal life.  Remember the story of The Tortoise and the Hare?  I don’t know if all those classic fables and parables are still told in elementary school, but I certainly remember this story.  The moral of the story is probably as famous, if not more famous, than the story itself: slow and steady wins the race.  Despite being the slower of the two animals, the tortoise plugs away at the race and is able to pass up the over-confident hare as he sleeps in the shade. 

There is another way of looking at this story than just the classic slow and steady versus the quick, over-confident, and lazy theme that we typically hear about.  In light of how the readings today have such a clear theme of the importance of humility, I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to think of The Tortoise and the Hare as being about the virtue of humility verses the sin of pride.  When we take a careful look at the character of the hare, we see that he is not just confident that he can run faster than his reptile competitor.  Confidence is one thing: it simply means that we are sure we can accomplish something without much difficulty.  There is nothing wrong with being confident.  When it comes to the hare, though, we are dealing with pride.  When I think of pride, I often picture someone in a big feather-down coat in the winter time that makes the person look twice as big as they really are.  Pride puffs us up.  It makes us think we are much more important than we really are.  Not only are we confident in our abilities, but we are under the delusion that we are better than anyone else around us; maybe even thinking we are the best.  That's what's going on with the hare in the story.  It never even occurs to him that the tortoise might have a chance of winning.  In every version of the story that I remember hearing or seeing as an animated cartoon, the hare even brags that he will jump circles around the tortoise.  He naps in the middle of the race because he is so prideful. 

By contrast, the tortoise is an example of humility.  He doesn't presume to brag about his abilities, nor does he attempt to rub it in the face of the hare about who will win and who will lose.  He doesn't even seem to have any idea who will win and he doesn't even seem to care who does win in the end.  All he knows or cares about is that he is going to try the best he can with the abilities that he has.  That is more or less what humility is all about: knowing what one's gifts and abilities are and being satisfied with those gifts and abilities.  If the tortoise would have been prideful, he would have given up as soon as he saw that the hare had him beat with speed.  But because he was humble, he persevered and kept up a slow but steady pace and won as a result.  

So now, we can see why it was to the tortoise's advantage to be humble, but what does that have to do with us?  Why do the readings today take all that time to tell us the importance of humility?  Well, Jesus' parable helps show that staying humble when it comes to finding a place to sit at a dinner will certainly save us some embarrassment.  However, if we take the time to look more closely at the readings, we will find that it goes much deeper.  It has to do with our relationship with God. 

Consider the words that we heard from the Book of Sirach.  “Humble yourself the more, the greater you are, and you will find favor with God.”  God is not looking to have a relationship with the greatest and the most powerful of humanity.  He is not going to be all the more impressed with us because we can do all the things that might impress other human beings; like being the person who gives the best gifts or does the most impressive things or even appears to be the most holy or spiritual.  God wants the person who is humble.  The prideful person is more interested with showing how good they are at various things and showing how impressive they are.  The prideful person wouldn't be interested in a deeper relationship with God because they are too busy showing how great and strong they are to others.  I know from personal experience that when pride is getting the best of me I start caring less about my relationship with God and care more about proving myself to others and showing off my gifts and talents.  Humility finds us eventually, however, because even if we don't choose humility ourselves, we will be humbled in some way, because we can never do it all by ourselves.

Our second reading for the Letter to the Hebrews does not mention “humility”, but it is about coming to know God better.  The author starts out in this passage by explaining that the audience did not come to know God like the people of the Old Testament did.  They could never come to know God better because they heard from Him from a distance: through fire (like Moses and the burning bush) or from darkness and trumpet blasts.  Even when God tried to speak to them, they preferred that Moses would be their intermediary between God and them.  The author continues, however, that we Christians have come to know God better.  We have actually approached Mount Zion, where the temple is and where God dwells on Earth.  We have come to know Jesus, who is God made flesh, who came and dwelt among us, and who died for us.  It was through Christ, who humbled Himself to the point of living and dying as one of us, that we have come to know Christ better.  Humility is what brings us closer.

Finally, we have the example of the parable.  As I mentioned before, the need for humility is not simply about avoiding embarrassment, whether because we are asked to move to a lower place of honor or because we have lost a race to someone much slower than us.  Jesus' point is that if we are filled with pride, if our focus is on ourselves and how we can get more for ourselves, we are only going to remain distant from God and never come to know Him better.  Even if God tries to intervene and come to bring us closer to Him, we will be too distracted by our pride to notice the difference.  Humility is our ticket into Heaven.

So let us strive for humility, my brothers and sisters.  Let us keep in mind that we can never do anything apart from God.  He is the greatest; we are but His servants.  There is always someone better than us in some way.  Keep to humility.  I suggest regular reception of the Sacrament of Reconciliation.  We can't remain prideful when we are making ourselves look at the sins we have committed and what we can do to improve.  Remember that God will always help us as well.  Let us strive for holiness.