While Jesus was “dining at the home of one of the leading Pharisees” he told them a parable about humility, “When you are invited (to a banquet) go and take the lowest place.” “When you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.” “Be humble.”
Humble means of the earth. To be a humble human being means we are in touch with the truth of who we are. We are fragile creatures who have arisen from the soil, are inspired for the eternal in a million moments, and who, in our time, return to the soil where we live forever in the flow of life. Sometimes we stretch and reach for God and feel the touch of Divinity. Other times we behold God within and between and share the Oneness of Divinity. We are not made for control over others, can never really own anything independent of others, nor can we fulfill ourselves through command of taking from others. There is too much of our history that has people taking what they did not really need. Lacking humility we have left others without that which they really did need. Many indigenous people know this truth: the Karuk and Yoruk people who need the Shasta River water and fish; the Tlinget and Haida people who need the Tongass trees; and the Standing Rock, Cheyenne River, and Yankton Sioux people who need water and land. They ask, in their humility, to let everyone have everything so that each of us will really need nothing. Everything, everyone is gift and we have only to open ourselves and receive. In a sense, we each need everything and everyone as the gift they are truly meant to be, as they need us to be who we are meant to be. It can be a fearsome risk to be open – to be open to others in their fullness, and to open ourselves to our fullness. In little ways and sometimes in big ways we do not always receive, we do not always open. We help craft the poor but do not receive them, we do not open ourselves to them. We do not know their humility, nor learn from it. We help craft the lowly, the marginalized but do not know they are gift. Who of us live our lives in touch with people who have so little? Who of us can live with so little? Can we too live humbly, with nothing, except that which we carry in our pockets? How difficult it is for us to be in that lowly space. It is a space where little is needed, perhaps nothing at all is needed. We tend to think of human evolution in terms of gains; intelligence, skills, understanding. Perhaps human evolution also happens through loss of externals about ourselves – like a rough cut of carbon, we are cut further as a diamond. We do not need what we thought we did. We need nothing really – only the love we carry in our humble hearts.
“To reach those priceless layers is to experience, with equal truth, that one has need of everything, and that one has need of nothing. Everything is needed because the world will never be large enough… with the means of grasping the Divine… And yet nothing is needed; for… everything that fades away and dies will only serve to give all reality (Divinity) back to us.” (The Divine Milieu – Pierre Teilhard)
Prayer: Beautiful Spirit, We are all we need.
Question: Who of us, when we “hold a banquet, invite the poor, the cripple, the lame, the blind?”
Aug 28, 2022 Gospel Luke 14:1-14 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time