Homily for Ordinary Time 30 - Oct. 23, 2016

Homily for Ordinary Time 30

October 23, 2016

Know Thyself

 

            One time a desperate mother made a long, arduous, three-day journey to meet Gandhi and ask his advice. Upon reaching the holy man, the woman begged him to help her with her son. “My son never sits still, he’s angry all the time and he’s failing in school and getting into trouble. What can I do with him?”

            Gandhi answered, “Come back in one month and I will give you your answer.”

            So the woman made the long trek home and the following month, made the arduous journey back to the holy man.

            Gandhi said to her simply, “All you need to do for your son is to stop feeding him sugar. He will be better off.”

            The woman angrily demanded, “That’s all? That’s all I have to do? Why did you make me come back, making that difficult journey? Why couldn’t you have told me that last time?”

            Gandhi replied, “Because last month, I was still eating sugar.”

            It was Socrates who often said, “Know thyself.” This is also the first principle in the spiritual life as well. To truly advance along the path of holiness, we first need to know who we are in the light of Christ.

            The Pharisee in today’s Gospel was completely deluded as to who he was. Yes, perhaps he was righteous, but he missed the fact that he was filled with pride, and that any virtue he had was a result of God’s grace and love. He deceived himself, thinking himself better than he truly was. Because of that, God’s grace could not work in his heart.

            In contrast, we see the tax collector, who knew himself well. He recognized that before God’s immense holiness, he was a sinner. But he also knew that he had the potential to be redeemed – thus, he could make that prayer for mercy confidently before God.

            So who are we before God? Two aspects we need to consider:

            First, we are infinitely loved and infinitely loveable. We don’t have to do anything to earn God’s love or “earn” Heaven – His love is a free grace, one that is bestowed upon us freely simply because He created us. We are not accidents, we are not merely here because of random chance. No – as Pope Benedict said so beautifully, “Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed. Each of us is loved. Each of us is necessary.” God doesn’t make junk – we’re here because He loves us.

            But we hold this reality in tension with the reality that we are sinners. We have all fallen short of what we could be. This is also where we must know ourselves – where our weaknesses are, where we could be more Christ-like, where we need conversion. We don’t consider these things to make ourselves feel bad or guilty, but to allow the light of God’s grace to shine on our sins so that we can repent of them and turn back to the Lord.

            Even twelve-step programs recognize the importance of this brutal honesty with ourselves. The fourth step of Alcoholics Anonymous is to “Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of oneself”. In other words, get to know your weaknesses and sins so that we can avoid them in the future. Athletes, too, know this principle – if you’re a football player and you’re pretty fast but you can’t catch well, you’ll want to work on that if you want to be elite.

            In the same way, if you want to live an excellent life – to truly be holy, and not just mediocre – we want to “know ourselves” well. For example, if I notice that when I’m hungry or tired I tend to be angry with people, then I need to be diligent about trying to not be hungry or tired – or when I am, I have to be extra careful about how I react to people. If I know that being around certain people will cause me to curse or tell dirty jokes, then I need to be vigilant when I am around them to make sure my language is clean. Often times when I’m doing my morning prayer, I mentally run through my upcoming day, to see where the temptations and pitfalls may be, and I ask God to give me extra grace to deal with them. Awareness of our weaknesses is half the battle!

            Once we know our weaknesses, we surrender them to God – we ask God to go there, to bring His light, His healing, His love. And like the tax collector, we too shall go home justified.