Homily: 4th Sunday in OT 2017 - "Seek the Lord, Seek Justice, Seek Humility"

Recently, I was talking with one of the brothers from the Blessed Sacrament Community over at St. Pashcals about the great Winston Churchill. Churchill is certainly one of history’s intriguing and complex characters. At times, his ego seems to loom quite large: When asked by a reporter if he was prepared to meet his maker, the respected leader responded: “I am ready to meet my maker. Whether my maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.”

With that same razor sharp wit, he could be humble as well. Churchill was once asked, "Doesn't it thrill you to know that every time you make a speech, the hall is packed to overflowing?" "It's quite flattering," replied Sir Winston. "But whenever I feel that way, I always remember that if instead of making a political speech I was being hanged, the crowd would be twice as big."

At least he was able to make a joke about himself from time to time, many lack the humility even for that. And his humility is certainly evident in his service to his country, putting the needs of his country before his own.

When St. Augustine was asked to name the three most important virtues, he gave an interesting answer. The first he said is “humility”, the second he said is “humility”, and third he said is “humility”. I have a book of quotations from the writings on the saints organized by topics: charity, discernment, mercy. But the section on humility is the longest.

Thomas Aquinas wrote in his Summa, “The reason Christ especially recommended humility to us is because it most effectively removes the main obstacle to our spiritual welfare, the preoccupation with earthly greatness that holds us back from striving for spiritual and heavenly things.”

Humility is the unifying idea that undergirds the eight Beatitudes, which we heard proclaimed in our Gospel today, summarizing Jesus' teaching about how to live. Looking carefully, we see a common denominator amongst each of the beatitudes: you will be blessed when you stop thinking about yourself all the time.

The poor in spirit are blessed because they realize they are not the center of the universe - God is. The clean of heart is blessed because he doesn’t use people for the sake of his pleasure. The peacemaker is blessed because he engages in caring for needs and problems of others. The merciful is blessed because he seeks to alleviate the suffering of others. The mournful is blessed because he is sorrowful over sins sins and remedies the damage his sins have done to the Church, the world, and other people. The meek is blessed because he rightly channels his strengths, practices self-control, and cares more about getting things done than getting credit for doing things. Those who hunger for righteousness are blessed because they seek to serve a higher purpose rather than only looking after themselves.
Underlying all the Beatitudes is this fundamental attitude that that puts God and others ahead of self, and we call that “humility”. Humility is absolutely necessary for growing in Christian maturity—growing out of the egotism of youth into the selflessness of Christian adulthood.

The need to become humble runs throughout the scriptures. As we heard in our first reading, from the prophet Zephaniah, written 600 years before the birth of Christ, “seek the Lord…seek justice, seek humility”.
Why is humility important? Pride closes us in on ourselves, arrogance seeks seeks happiness only in its own selfish willfulness. Humility on the other hand opens us the blessings God wants for us, and helps us to recognize the blessing of serving others. In the beatitudes Jesus defines the holy life, the blessed life to be one that is put at the service of God and others.

St. Philip Neri would say, “Had I only been humble, I never would have committed this sin.”
The same saints who speak about the importance of humility, also teach of the importance of humbling ourselves before God in the acknowledgement and the confession of our sins. The saints teach the importance of frequent examination of the conscience and regular confession. As with all virtues, we grow in humility by exercising it and there is no better way to exercise humility than to go to confession regularly and frequently.

Our Christian faith impels us not to simply seek the bare minimum in order to get to heaven, there is nothing in the beatitudes about doing the bare minimum. Rather our Christian faith impels us to seek the perfection of our souls for which God made us. We seek to overcome even small vices, in order to become more like Christ—to humble the major areas of pride and also the areas that are hidden to everyone else.

Just because we aren’t axe murderers or suicide bombers doesn’t mean we have nothing to confess. The book of Proverbs says, “even the righteous man stumbles seven times a day.” So it is silly for us to pretend that we have nothing to confess. If we can’t find sins to confess, likely we haven’t examined our conscience as well as we should. Saint Mother Teresa went to confession every week, not because she had these glaring mortal sins, but she truly wanted what God wanted for her, the perfection of her soul. So we do well to examine ourselves thoroughly, rooting out the selfish impulses, the judgmental thoughts, lack of custody over our tongues, over our words, laziness in our prayer life.

God knows that we are constantly battling against these impulses, and he instituted the sacrament of confession for our sake, to give us an objective way to repent, to receive his forgiveness, and to attain strength from his grace to keep fighting and improving.

During the season of Lent, which is just a few weeks away, we increase our confession schedule. Here and at St. Paschal’s there will we penance services, as well as our Diocesan Night of Confession during which every parish in the diocese will have confession from 5 to 8pm. Of course we have confessions scheduled here at St. Clare every Saturday at 3:30, and confessions are always available by appointment.

St. Alphonus once said, “After we have offended God, the Devil labors to keep the mouth closed, and to prevent us from confessing our guilt.” Those voices telling you that you don’t need to go to confession, you have to ask, are those really from God?

St. Faustina said, “Pride keeps in darkness…the soul that does not come to confession in humility”. So let us expose our souls to the light of God’s mercy.

May we confess our sins in truly humility; for humility opens the doors of our hearts to Christ, who wishes to bestow upon us his many gifts, and lead us to eternal life for the glory of God and salvation of souls.