HOMILY PRONOUNCED BY MSGR. DIEGO MONROY PONCE; GENERAL AND EPISCOPAL VICAR OF GUADALUPE, RECTOR OF THE SANCTUARY.
ORDINARY XXII SUNDAY

Sunday, September 2nd of 2007

IF WE ARE HUMBLER WE WILL BE GREATER

Brothers, humility is one of the highest values of the kingdom, and we are invited to belong to it. This virtue is specially difficult because as much as we look for it, we take the risk of boasting about being  humble, for that reason we enter in contradiction, but we can not forget: being humble is exigency of the Kingdom to accept, and to belong to it. This is the thing that the God’s word indicates in the texts of the Holy Scriptures that today it has been proclaimed in the celebration from the Sunday.

The book of the Ecclesiastes, it is a book that belongs to the group of books that are known as “books of the wisdom”, this means that are books that transmit a common wisdom to us, but we do not know to listen to it. It is about the wisdom of people, and it is very ordinary that we can ask with a just reason: how it is possible that something so ordinary has been included as an inspired text, and that, for that reason it contains the God’s word?  It seems that the answer is that God wants to show us how He makes hear His voice in the consideration of the simplest, and the most ordinary things.

Brothers, in the books of the wisdom, we have a wisdom which is very close to the human experience. It is the result of the observation of the more common social behaviors that are filled with teachings. In this social situation the author shows us how we always are tempted to put ourselves over others. In this context of the reflection of the wisdom, the author indicates to us that the wise person, the true one, meditates the proverbs and wishes to be always to the listening of the wise people. For that reason the author praises, in this text, the humility before God, but also before the others.

In the gospel, Jesus teaches us that humility is a necessary element to accept, and to enter the kingdom. Jesus, in His context, gives this teaching in a meal to which He had been invited by a Pharisee with twisted intentions (like the hypocritical Pharisees were used to act). The text says that Jesus observed how the guests chose the first places, behavior that Jesus disapproved with a commentary that he did through a parabola, and we have to pay attention to His final commentary: whoever that praises himself will be humiliated, and who humiliates himself, he will be raised.   

My brothers, like in other occasions, today, it is necessary to understand correctly what is taught to us. As we said at the beginning of this reflection, the topic of the humanity put us in a very slippery place. We better have to ask the virtue of humility as a gift, and not as an own conquest, because there is the risk of asking it as a value in itself, and we avoid what it brings with itself: the humiliation; when we contemplate the life of the Lord Jesus, we know that this is impossible. Brothers, without the humiliation, it is not a virtue, it is disguised arrogance.

My brothers, In fact, we even can cause to be humiliated to feel ourselves virtuous and holy, we can not forget the image of the “hypocrite” that Moliere characterizes in a very good way in his humorous comedy “el tartufo”. As we have said, when we look for being humble, we can be looking for carefully other things. In the colloquial language we say: the man is thrown by himself in order to be raised by others, but it can be that nobody raises him!, and  what a frustration! The truth of the intentions, of who tries to act as humble people, will come out.

It would be better the simplicity and the contentment, as well as gratitude for the person that we are and for the things that we have. My brothers, for that reason it is very useful to know ourselves with humility to accept what we are or the way that we are. The humility is truth, and truth is that everybody has limits in what we are, we can, and we have. This is wisdom; and evangelical wisdom; Christ, the man-God, comes to put us in our place: you are a miserable, poor and finite man. You are great, but before God you are nothing. If you love deeply God, you will be as Him, and you will find Him in the others, and you will love them as you love Him. 

You do not use the others for your benefit; you do not despise your brother that has fewer qualities than you; you do not look for who can serve you as step to grow. Being humble is the man that before God and before the others he feels small. The humble man is the one that helps in the necessities, the one that humanizes the city, the one that makes happy to his family, that is friend of his friends and that does not have anybody as enemy. It is a vain person the one that dominates “because he thinks that he can do the things”; the one that robs “because he thinks that he would be a stupid if he does not take advantage of the situation”; the one that is “very macho” and that runs over to the weak ones. The one that does not live in the friendship of God and of men, he is a vain being. This person does not produce pumps, not complicated machines, but he kills love. “Man is very great in God and very small in his vanity”.

As Disciples of Christ, we do not have other model of authentic humility that the one that He offers us. We have to serve (like Him) specially to the marginalized ones of any class, instead of appear in order to be seen, because they will not serve us as step or platform to go up and to be seen and to be applauded, instead of this, many times we will be criticized because of not take advantage of the opportunities that according to the criterion of the world, these give us brightness, they assure us the success, and for that reason they make us important.  

This is what Christ teaches us today: the true richness is in the poverty, and in the service, the true force is in what the world considers weakness, the most authentic freedom is when we become slaves, and that the true life is reached when we lose it.

This is the wisdom that we celebrate and that we look for to make ours in each one of the renewals of the sacrifice of the cross that are practiced in the celebration of the Eucharist every Sunday. The mass from Sundays around Christ, and before the Father, assemble us (the brothers) as members of an only town: the new town of which its head is Christ that teaches us with His life, which was given by love, to serve each other taking the last places. These are the values of the kingdom. It is not the competition and the rivalry to take the first places; it is not the arrogance of the one that feels powerful and with rights on the others to impose his very short points of view. We have a lot of this in our society in which we have to live against the current with the help that the Holy Spirit (that we have received) gives us.

Amen.