This Sermon is prepared by
Rev.Fr.Peter Jayakanthan sss
Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament
Corpus Christi Catholic Church,
Houston, Texas, US
22nd Sunday of Ordinary YearHumble ….to Mingle…….!Sir 3:17-18, 20, 28-29; Heb 12:18-19, 22-24a; Lk 14:1, 7-14Dear Sisters and brothers in Christ Jesus, I am glad to welcome you for this Eucharistic celebration of our Lord’s passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. We are reminded as we gather around this altar as circle of people, that we are equal, we are one and we are united. We keep our Lord Jesus as first and He does the rest. We shall remember all the competitions for power and positions around the world, in secular world and in the Church. We may offer them at the Eucharistic altar that the persons in power and responsibility may move beyond and learn to humble and be in the process of building the church and kingdom among the last, the sick and the suffering by mingling with them as Jesus showed.Pope Francis is continues to remain first in in Facebook, twitter and in the google search by people, It is because he is consistent constant in humbling himself to mingle with everyone. He makes mercy Friday trips on Fridays to different homes. Pope Francis has paid a surprise visit to a community helping 20 young women get their lives back together after being rescued from prostitution. While leaders of the communities and structures, he is visiting are given some advance notice, there is no publicity and no open press availability. Usually, the Vatican releases a few photographs and sometimes a short video clip afterward. Since January, the Pope has visited a home for the aged and a home for people in a persistent vegetative state; a community for recovering drug addicts; a refugee center near Rome and a refugee camp in Greece; A L’Arche community; and a home for sick and aged priests. He is known for his humble life-style, humble ministry and as humble pope of history. Few months back Pope Francis invited children to accompany in his Pope mobile at the Papal audience. It is a clear message of the Church from Pope Francis that only by humbling one can mingle like Jesus with the broken and suffering. Don’t seek and choose for the power, position and first place rather opt for the last place by dying to yourself, losing your self-interest and emptying your longing then your humility will raise you up. This is the invitation offered to us from today’s liturgy. We observe in the gospel that the Pharisees are observing Jesus carefully as He always performed some extraordinary act or miracle while dining. We also read that Jesus was noticing them. So Pharisees were looking for Jesus’s next move on the Sabbath day as strict religious leaders of the law. Jesus noticing them challenges them and warns His disciples that one needs to look, to seek and opt for the last place. First place should be offered to the Lord, as Jesus kept God the Father. Jewish table was surrounded by couch where invitees or the religious leaders chose their first places of honor. The poor, the maimed and the blind were discriminated and declined from their table of celebration. Jesus who offered healing at the biased synagogue, changes here from the table of division and discrimination to the table of mingling by humbling himself. Yes, Eucharistic table is a round and surrounded by all, He is the center and we are called to be humble, choosing the last place in order to mingle with the broken, lonely and the deprived. Jesus humbled to become Human, emptied to become servant and broken to die on the cross to mingle with us in bringing liberation, God the Father raised Him. In the first reading from the book of Sirach; a moral instruction and wise sayings written by a devout Jewish sage about 175 years before the time of Jesus. It is part of the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Scriptures. As a world traveler (34:12-13) and a respected scribe and teacher, the author from this historical books gives the lesson as the head of the academy. It was the time the Greek thoughts, ideology and concept influenced everyone. So knowledge was considered great. Possessing the knowledge filled them with pride forgetting their Jewish religious practices and their faith in God. Here the author stresses that Humility is the foundation on which all the other virtues are built, if we have it, the others will grow from it as the tree comes from the root. Like a parent or elder brother offering wise counsel, the author recommended that his readers find true greatness by living humbly. Scripture most frequently calls at those who refused to be humble that they were proud but rather that they were hypocrites! Hypocrisy, a word derived from the Greek hupokrites, meant one who answers back. Eventually, the term was used in reference to the dialogue among actors on a stage and finally became a synonym for actor. As William Barclay (“The Gospel of Matthew, ”The Daily Study Bible, The Saint Andrew Press, Edinburgh: 1975) has correctly explained, hypocrite then came to mean an actor in the worst sense of the term, “a pretender, one who acts a part, one who wears a mask to cover true feelings, one who puts on an external show while inwardly his thoughts and feelings are very different.” So one who is not humble is acting and pretending by covering all the real experiences and feelings. What are the pretending masks I need to get rid of? Is it pride, ego, self-assertiveness or power obsession? What keeps us from involving and relating? Polish discus thrower Piotr Malachowski, who won silver at the Rio Olympics, has auctioned off his medal to fund treatment for a three-year-old boy with cancer. "If you help me, my silver medal may turn out to be more precious than gold for Olek," he said, adding that he would use the entire sum raised to pay for the boy's treatment. A while later, Malachowski wrote "Success", saying the medal had found a taker. Most Rev. Paul-Émile Léger served as Archbishop of Montreal from 1950 to 1968, and was elevated as cardinal in 1953 by Pope Pius XII. He was one of the most powerful men in Canada and within the Catholic Church. He was a man of deep conviction and humility. on April 20, 1968 he resigned his office and leaving his red vestments, crosier, miter, and pallium in his Montreal office, disappeared. Years later, he was found living among the lepers and disabled, outcasts of a small African village. When a Canadian journalist asked him, "Why? " here is what Cardinal Léger had to say, "It will be the great scandal of the history of our century that 600 million people are eating well and living luxuriously and three billion people starve, and every year millions of children are dying of hunger. I am too old to change all that. The only thing I can do which makes sense is to be present. I must simply be in the midst of them by participating in their life so, just told people in Canada that you met an old priest. I am a priest who is happy to be old and still a priest and participating among those who suffer. I am happy to be here and to take them into my heart." Can we say that I don’t act or perform rather I participate with the plan of God and with the lives of the people? St. Augustine said: "Humility is so necessary for Christian perfection that among all the ways to reach perfection, humility is first, humility is second, and humility is third." He added, "Humility makes men angels, and pride makes angels devils."- Amen. 
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