Humility is our glory: homily for the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Homily for the twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time (C).

Humility is the virtue that stands out both in today’s Gospel reading and in Sirach’s advice to “conduct your affairs with humility” and to “humble yourself the more, the greater you are.”  I’ve been thinking about humility a lot this summer because I’ve been thinking about my grandfathers.  One passed away in June, the other fourteen years ago, and “humble” is one of the first words that comes to mind when I think of either of them—perhaps in both cases because my grandfathers were the quiet ones, and my grandmothers were the talkers!  One grandfather was a baker, the other lived his whole life in the same small town in Minnesota.  I think of them both as great men not because they sought attention or prestige, but because they didn’t.  Because they dedicated themselves to others, to their families and to their communities, without making a fuss about it, and left the lives of many better as a result.  In the homely etiquette lesson Jesus offers in the Gospel—take the lower place instead of elbowing your way to the head of the table—he points to one way in which a humble act can leave one better off in the long run.

Before delving further into the Gospel reading, I want to avoid a misunderstanding and say what humility isn’t.  It isn’t being a doormat or having low self-esteem.  It doesn’t mean denying one’s own dignity—our inherent dignity as human beings or our supernatural dignity as the sons and daughters of God adopted in baptism.  Humility, like any other virtue, is only a virtue if it is grounded in truth.  It means having an honest sense of our weaknesses and our strengths and not trying to present either one in a false light.  Humility does not mean letting others take advantage of us because doing so would result in a situation of injustice.  No virtue leads to relationships that are unjust and unbalanced.  If being “humble” causes you to feel resentment toward others, then it’s probably not genuine humility.

Humility is an aid to right relationships—we’ll return to that thought in a minute.  But, first, as an aside, in Christian circles, where humility is valued, occasionally one will find someone who won’t let you forget about his humility, no matter how many times he has to remind you.  Someone who practically wears a “humbler than thou” t-shirt and posts every humble act on Instagram.  I’ve met a few folks like this and—perhaps you can tell—they really annoy me.  Ostentatious humility is false humility, because true humility doesn’t call attention to itself.

To understand why, think about our relationships.  To understand ourselves truthfully, we must recognize that none of us is an entirely self-sufficient, self-contained individual.  From the moment we come into our existence in our mother’s womb, we are entirely dependent on our relationships with others.  We are dependent on our parents for our life, on our ancestors for our culture, on our nation and fellow citizens for the comfort and security that we enjoy.  Ultimately, we depend on God for everything.  And for our knowledge of God and of his Gospel, we depend upon a long and unbroken chain of apostles, martyrs, evangelists, and teachers—in other words, the Church.

Recognizing the reality of all these relationships that make us who we are should make us grateful and reluctant to try to thrust ourselves over and above other people.  It is only right and just, in other words, to prioritize, nurture, and protect our relationships just as much as we value our own personal existence.  When I think about my grandfathers, I think about the lifestyles that they chose, lifestyles anchored in their families and communities, their relationships with others.  One of the great soul-destroying errors of our age, in which I fear we are indoctrinating our young people, is that career is the primary source of meaning and identity in life, and that family—marriage and children—comes as a kind of add-on or accessory.  When we face the Lord in judgment, I doubt very much that he will ask us whether we were a junior or a senior vice-president, an assistant manager or a manager, a full professor or an adjunct.  But bringing children into the world and passing on our faith to them—that I suspect will get us invited to take a higher seat at the banquet table.

There is something more that needs to be said about humility, however, because the way that it presented in the Gospel hints at something much deeper than good manners, more even than finding the golden mean between deference and assertiveness.  The greatest example of humility is Jesus himself, God who lowered himself to take on human form, to live among us, born in poverty, executed like a criminal.  Jesus accepted treatment that was far less than what he deserved, that was infinitely unjust.  And you might think, well, how does that differ from being a doormat?  It’s a good question.  Jesus never forgets who he is.  Even during his Passion, he maintains his integrity and he does not cease to proclaim the truth of who he is; in John’s Gospel, in fact, he says, “For this I came into the world, to testify to the truth” (John 18:37).  He makes a decision to sacrifice himself, to accept the injustice of being made lowly, in order to restore us to justice.  In other words, sometimes a relationship of love will require self-sacrifice.  And self-sacrificing love is a type of humility that goes beyond the humility I’ve been talking about thus far.  It is a supernatural humility, and it really only makes sense if we understand what we are doing in relationship to what Jesus does.

Because the self-sacrifice of Jesus leads to glory.  And that is not being a doormat.  At the end of today’s reading, Jesus encourages us to do good to those who cannot repay us—the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame—and he says, “Blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you.”  But giving up repayment in this world does not mean accepting injustice, but rather joining in the self-giving action of Jesus to restore others to right relationship with God.  “You will be repaid,” Jesus says, “at the resurrection of the righteous.”  Humility means recognizing the truth that some relationships are worth sacrificing for.  Our relationship with God is worth any sacrifice.

But such sacrifices—made for and with God—can be made with joy, with peace, with confidence and courage because those are sacrifices which we do not make alone.  We make them together with him who is the alpha and the omega, the source and the end of life, one whose greatness is beyond words or understanding.  Such self-giving participates in a humility that is God-like, a humility that is our glory.

Readings: Sirach 3:17-18, 20, 28-29; Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24a; Luke 14:1, 7-14

August 31, 2025

Cloisters on the Platte Retreat Center, Nebraska