First Reading - Romans 11:1-29
Gospel - Luke 14:1,7-11
In the first reading, Paul highlights the importance of place, Israelites enjoy, in the sight of God. He firmly states that the importance of Israelites is not diminished because of their failure to recognize Christ in Jesus but their failure has given opportunity for others (gentiles) to appropriate grace from God. However, the importance of Israelites remains unaffected in the sight of God. Furthermore, he underlines that Jews are still loved by God as before although they are enemies of the good news. Paul, by saying this, emphasizes that God is immutable or God's love remains unchangeable, it's we who need to humble ourselves to experience that.
In the gospel, Jesus teaches us today about the virtue of humility. The teaching of Jesus on humility corresponds to the situation. He notices how guests chose the places of honour at the meal where he himself was invited. It's likely that the invited guests were respected people among others. However, Jesus finds a room to impart a lesson on humility on seeing the desires of the guests to seek the best places for themselves. The teaching of Jesus on humility is contrary to human standard, because he tells to take the lowest place when invited to the wedding feast. Jesus says that the choice of the lowest seat would bring honour to us, but the choice of the honourable seat would bring humiliation. What does he mean? He means to not flag prominence in the presence of people. He means we should recognize our worth rather than brag ourselves of what we have or what we do. Jesus demands due humility rather than false humility. Final sentence expresses the main punch of the teaching of Jesus on humility is by winning honour from God rather than people alone.
The parable sets its plot in the wedding banquet which also refers to the eschatological implications of the heavenly banquet. Jesus also emphasizes that one should not think better of oneself than he/she really is. This also implies that the privilege of the heavenly banquet is not on the basis of merit but is a gift.
Dear friends, we are on a competitive world where we are trying to assert our worth and importance. This may be required but this shouldn't became everything for us. We do need the virtue of humility in us to allow God to work in and through us. We need the virtue of humility to see the worth of others as much as we have our own. We need the virtue of humility to droop down to experience the grace God bestows on us. In the first reading, Paul stresses that Israelites are not abandoned by God rather they still enjoy the preferable love of God but they need to bend down to see and experience that in Jesus. It simply needs humility to do so. Jesus underlines in the gospel that human importance gives us recognition and importance but recognition from God should be our focus.
Dear friends, we do need humility to win the favour of God. The best way we show our humility to God is in our prayers. It's here we come in complete surrender to God, hence is a beautiful example of humility. However, we need to be careful that this occasion of prayer should not be the occasion to show our piety or self-righteousness but an occasion to show due humility.
May God help us grow in the virtue of humility.
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