humility: to be put in one's proper place - 22nd Sunday C 2013

Parables are stories that are told to capture a particular moment in our life when we were touched by grace.   Parables are stories that bring us back to a particular moment in our lives so that we can reappraise what happened, perhaps re-appreciate it, and even more to learn from the same experience again.  Parables evoke an experience.

Today the Lord tells us a parable and to profit from this story we have to ask ourselves what particular moment in our lives, what particular experience, what grace-filled moment would the Lord want us to go back to, to look back into and to learn from?  Ano ang mga hitabo sa aton kabuhi, mga grasya nga ginapadumdum sa aton sang sini nga istorya nga ginasaysay ni Jesus.

The parable starts by saying, “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not recline at table in the place of honor.   A more distinguished guest than you may have been invited by him, and the host who invited both of you may approach you and say, ‘Give your place to this man,’ and then you would proceed with embarrassment to take the lowest place.” 

Can you remember a time in your life, an experience when you were embarrassed, when you were made to realize that you are occupying some place that was never meant for you?  Can you recall an experience in life when you were shamed into silence, when you were made to go down because you have claimed for yourself a place that is too high for you?  Have you experienced congratulating yourself for some good fortune sakto gid ko, very good gid ako, kaalam gid sa akon, but then in a turnaround of events you realized nga daw ibunggo mo ulo mo sa bato, kay sala gali ang desisyon mo, nagpalpak ang abi mo maayo kag igsakto?  Have you experienced such?  Embarrassment, shame, humiliation, the feeling of defeat, the feeling of being crushed. 

Filipinos and most especially the Chinese know what honor is, why it is important not to lose face, why being put to shame hurts a lot.  Kabudlay nga mahuy-an kita. And yet this is what the parable evokes, this is what Jesus wants us to recall in this story, not to haunt us,  not to embarrass ourselves further, but to recall it as a grace-filled moment, to recall and accept it as a blessing because it is in a humiliating situation that we learn humility.

[Why only now?  To teach us humility because Jesus knew that we can only learn humility from hindsight after the experience is long past and we have become more accepting, more open to the good that that embarrassing situation had brought to our lives.    You don’t learn humility at that instance of a humiliating circumstance – no –because we would be busy justifying ourselves or blaming others, or defending ourselves.  You learn humility after the anger has subsided and you are led to realize that that event has brought you some amount of good.] 

What is humility?  We have a very picturesque way of describing the act of humiliating a person.  Binutang sia sa iya sakto nga lugar.  Ginpahamtang sia sa iya lugar, kay man wala sia sa iya lugar.  To be put in one’s place.  Isn’t this what Jesus is saying in the parable?  “Give your place to this man,’ and then you would proceed with embarrassment to take the lowest place.” Remember the story of the tower of Babel?  They wanted to go to heaven on their own accord by building a tall tower.  They wanted to be gods.  Again they were put by God in their proper place.   Humility therefore is to be conscious of our proper place, to be aware at all times of one’s real place.  The embarrassing events happening around us these past weeks are reflections of this lack of consciousness as to our proper place.  We cannot play gods, as if we own everything and so do what we like.  We cannot play gods as if we can control everything and so do as we please.  We cannot play gods as if we can make ourselves invisible and so do what we want to people we think we can readily outwit.  It is not humility to think ourselves above the rest feeling not just privileged but even entitled, because in reality all of us are undeserving of the successes, the riches, the power and the position we now possess.

In the gospel Jesus is telling us to invite to our fiesta those who are not capable of returning the favour.  We are being asked to give to those we cannot find a good reason to give.  Waay ka man kuhaon sa iya nga wala na nga daan sa imo.  So why is God making us do this?  This is to make us realize that this is also our reality before God.  We have been given good things by God for no good reason at all. Waay man sia kuhaon sa aton nga wala na nga daan sa iya. 

Today in this novena we are asked to be committed and faithful – big words.  But we can only be committed and faithful when we are humble, when we know our place, when we realize that God has given us so much for no good reason at all.