Accepting your Place: The Twenty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

                                                  Accepting your Place 

The Twenty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

August 28, 2022

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Sirach 3:17-29; Psalm 68; Hebrews 12:18-24; Luke 14:1, 7-14

 

          We get an emphasis on humility and a proper understanding of ourselves in all sets of readings today. Sirach holds it up as a virtue and describes it as a long-lasting value while knowing that it is counter-cultural. The sage knows that those who are loud and aggressive, plotting, and tactical will get ahead in life, while the one who is silent and thinking about the welfare of others is deemed weak, and therefore expendable. Our human nature tends to regard humility as a religious virtue, but it does not have any place in daily society.

 

          Our human nature takes over when we are invited to large-scale dinner events. We are eager to be regarded as someone of value and worth and we want to sit next to a person of importance. We like to rub elbows with those who have power and influence, and we see ourselves as elevated because of it. Consider the amount of time that people deliberate who will sit next to whom during a wedding reception or a major fund raising event. We get bruised when we are seated at the kids table or with the crazy aunt or uncle who has peculiar conversational manners. We want to sit at our appropriate place that mirrors our station in life, or at least where we think we should be seated. These are serious decisions that have to be made.

 

          Jesus was invited to sit at the head table with the Pharisees because he was enigmatic. They watched every move he made to see which dietary customs he would keep and which he would disregard. Once again, they wanted to trap him. While it was an honor to be invited to a dinner of the respectable men in town, Jesus turns it around and questions their motives, and in the process insults them for yielding to human nature instead of divine nature. 

 

          As much as it may hurt, we have to know our place and be satisfied with it. Humility is simply knowing who we are and being satisfied with it. We get our worth and value in difference places. A seat of honor at one table does not measure our entire being, for we will hold a higher place of honor at another table, perhaps one that is more meaningful to us. We have to decide to enjoy the dinner and the people we are with wherever we are, for we can recognize our blessings. Instead of letting your ego get bruised and then spending a lot of time spewing about it, decide to enjoy the people you are with who are begging to be loved and honored, and your presence might give them the honor that makes them feel special.

 

          Jesus ends this passage by speaking about the poor. The message is that we are to make everyone feel welcome, honored, and dignified. They deserve it. Life is hard for many of us. Choose to love the ones who are begging to be welcomed and accepted. It could be a memory of your act of goodness that endures for a lifetime. 

 

Scripture for Daily Mass

 

First Reading: 

 

Monday: (1 Corinthians 2) I came to you in weakness and fear and much trembling, and my message and my proclamation were not with persuasive words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of spirit and power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.

 

Tuesday: (1 Corinthians 2) The Spirit scrutinizes everything, even the depths of God. Among men, who knows what pertains to the man except his spirit that is within?
Similarly, no one knows what pertains to God except the Spirit of God.

 

Wednesday: (1 Corinthians 3) I could not talk to you as spiritual people, but as fleshly people, as infants in Christ. I fed you milk, not solid food, because you were unable to take it.

 

Thursday: (1 Corinthians 3) Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you considers himself wise in this age, let him become a fool, so as to become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God.

Friday (1 Corinthians 4) Therefore, do not make any judgment before the appointed time, until the Lord comes, for he will bring to light what is hidden in darkness
and will manifest the motives of our hearts, and then everyone will receive praise from God.

 

Saturday (1 Corinthians 4) We are fools on Christ’s account, but you are wise in Christ; we are weak, but you are strong; you are held in honor, but we in disrepute.

 

Gospel: 

 

Monday: (Mark 6) Herodias harbored a grudge against him and wanted to kill him but was unable to do so. Herod feared John, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man, and kept him in custody. When he heard him speak, he was very much perplexed, yet he liked to listen to him.

 

Tuesday: (Luke 4) In the synagogue there was a man with the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out in a loud voice, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?

 

Wednesday (Luke 4) Simon’s mother-in-law was afflicted with a severe fever,
and they interceded with him about her. He stood over her, rebuked the fever, and it left her.

 

Thursday (Luke 5) Getting into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, he asked him to put out a short distance from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.

 

Friday (Luke 5) No one tears a piece from a new cloak to patch an old one.
Otherwise, he will tear the new and the piece from it will not match the old cloak.

 

Saturday (Luke 6) While Jesus was going through a field of grain on a sabbath, his disciples were picking the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands, and eating them.

 

Saints of the Week

 

August 28: Augustine, bishop and doctor (354-430), was the author of his Confessions, his spiritual autobiography, and The City of God, which described the life of faith in relation to the life of the temporal world. Many other writings, sermons, and treatises earned him the title Doctor of the church. In his formative years, he followed Mani, a Persian prophet who tried to explain the problem of evil in the world. His mother’s prayers and Ambrose’s preaching helped him convert to Christianity. Baptized in 387, Monica died a year later. He was ordained and five years later named bishop of Hippo and defended the church against three major heresies:Manichaeism, Donatism, and Pelagianism.

 

August 29: The Martyrdom of John the Baptist recalls the sad events of John's beheading by Herod the tetrarch when John called him out for his incestuous and adulterous marriage to Herodias, who was his niece and brother's wife. At a birthday party, Herodias' daughter Salome danced well earning the favor of Herod who told her he would give her almost anything she wanted. 

 

September 3: Gregory the Great (540-604) was the chief magistrate in Rome and resigned to become a monk. He was the papal ambassador to Constantinople, abbot, and pope. His charity and fair justice won the hearts of many. He protected Jews and synthesized Christian wisdom. He described the duties of bishops and promoted beautiful liturgies that often incorporated chants the bear his name.

 

This Week in Jesuit History

 

• August 28, 1628: The martyrdom in Lancashire, England, of St. Edmund Arrowsmith. 
• August 29, 1541: At Rome the death of Fr. John Codure, a Savoyard, one of the first 10 companions of St. Ignatius. 
• August 30, 1556: On the banks of the St. Lawrence River, the Iroquois mortally wounded Fr. Leonard Garreau, a young missionary. 
• August 31, 1581: In St. John's Chapel within the Tower of London, a religious discussion took place between St. Edmund Campion, suffering from recent torture, and some Protestant ministers. 
• September 1, 1907. The Buffalo Mission was dissolved, and its members were sent to the New York and Missouri Provinces and the California Mission. 
• September 2, 1792. In Paris, ten ex-Jesuits were massacred for refusing to take the Constitutional oath. Also in Paris seven other fathers were put to death by the Republicans, among them Frs. Peter and Robert Guerin du Rocher. 
• September 3, 1566. Queen Elizabeth visited Oxford and heard the 26-year-old Edmund Campion speak. He was to meet her again as a prisoner, brought to hear her offer of honors or death.