22nd Sunday in OT, 09-02-07

Honor and the Kingdom of God

Scripture Readings
First Sir 3:17-18, 20, 28-29
Second Heb 12:18-19, 22-24a
Gospel Luke 14: 1, 7-14

Prepared by: Fr. Jonathan Kalisch, O.P.

1. Subject Matter

• Status in the Kingdom is a divine gift bestowed in accordance with the humility of following
Christ. Jesus highlights the characteristics of a disciple as humility and openness to all.
• Possessiveness and power-seeking as exemplified by the push for honor and glory at the
banquet, reveals a usurpation and rejection of God’s role as God.

2. Exegetical Notes

• Lk 14:1: Luke shows us that Jesus not only had fellowship with the Pharisees, but that he
also had their attention as they “watch lurkingly” – awaiting what Jesus will do this time.
• Lk 14: 7-14 can be summarized according to Bock as: a) an exhortation to take the back
seat (7-11) i) a parable in response to seating customs, ii) example of what not to do (8-9); iii)
what to do (10-11); and b) an exhortation to invite those who cannot repay (12-14), i) who not
to invite (12); who to invite (13) the promised heavenly reward (14).
• While 14:1 has the Pharisees watching Jesus, his instruction in 14:7 stems from Jesus’ own
careful watching of the Pharisees had for the seats of honor. See Mt 23:6 where the
Pharisees are scorned for seeking the ‘first place at banquets.’
• Ranking protocol in ancient society required giving the best seat to the most eminent person,
who often arrived last. The presumptuous guest would then have to take the least seat,
since all others would have been filled. In front of everyone, the prideful guest must “begin…
to head for the last seat,” as the Greek translates, depicting the shame felt with each step.
• Lk 14:10: “To be greeted as ‘friend’ and invited higher suggests a special intimacy and, more
than that, equality with the host.” (Johnson)
• Lk 14:10-11:It is better for others to recognize who you are then for you to suggest your
proper or improper place. God honors real humility with exaltation. See Luke 1:52-53, 6:21,
25; 10:15, 18:14.
• Prov 25:6-7 states “Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence or stand in the place
of the great; for it is better to be told, ‘Come up here,’ than to be put lower in the presence of
a noble.”
• Lk 14:13: Jesus exhorts the Pharisees to invite those who have needs, and cannot repay the
invitation. Such hospitality is given without concern for reciprocity and thereby pleases God.
• Those to be invited are the poor, crippled, lame, and blind. They reappear in 14:21 and 7:22.
It should be noted that these categories were excluded from the priesthood by Lev 21:17-21
and from the eschatological banquet in the Qumran writings. Yet, at this last dinner reported
in the Gospel before the Last Supper, it is precisely these outcasts whom are invited.
• Lk 14:14: The selfless generosity of inviting those who cannot pay back, will be reciprocated
by God. The inability of the invited to pay back is met by the guarantee that God will pay
back such kindness at the resurrection.
• The ‘parabolic’ character of Jesus’ words can be seen “in the context of Luke’s gospel as a
whole, with its consistent theme of divine reversal…all those who exalt themselves will be
humbled, and all those who humble themselves will be exalted. It is not the appropriate way
to get exalted that Jesus addresses, but the frame of mind that seeks exaltation in any
fashion. His advice therefore is ‘parabolic’ because it parodies the ‘good advice’ of worldly
wisdom only to subvert it by the more radical demand of the kingdom…the passives of ‘will
be humbled’ and ‘will be exalted’ indicate the action of God, not of other humans.” (Johnson)
• “Jesus proposes the measure of the kingdom. The Gospel is proclaimed to the outcast, the
blind, lame, and poor (7:22). These are the people they should invite. They are to ‘be
compassionate as your father is compassionate’ (6:36). And if they are, then they will be
rewarded by God rather than by other humans.” (Johnson)

3. References to the Catechism of the Catholic Church

• HUMILITY: The virtue by which a Christian acknowledges that God is the author of all good.
Humility avoids inordinate ambition or pride, and provides the foundation for turning to God in
prayer (2559). Voluntary humility can be described as "poverty of spirit" (2546).
• CCC 2559: “’Prayer is the raising of one's mind and heart to God or the requesting of good
things from God.’ But when we pray, do we speak from the height of our pride and will, or ‘out
of the depths’ of a humble and contrite heart? He who humbles himself will be exalted;
humility is the foundation of prayer. Only when we humbly acknowledge that ‘we do not know
how to pray as we ought,’ are we ready to receive freely the gift of prayer. ‘Man is a beggar
before God.’”
• CCC 2546: "’Blessed are the poor in spirit.’ The Beatitudes reveal an order of happiness and
grace, of beauty and peace. Jesus celebrates the joy of the poor, to whom the Kingdom
 already belongs: The Word speaks of voluntary humility as ‘poverty in spirit’; the Apostle
gives an example of God's poverty when he says: ‘For your sakes he became poor.’”

4. Patristic Commentary and Other Authorities

• St. Bruno of Segni: “This wedding feast takes place in the Church every day. Every day the
Lord makes a wedding feast, for every day he unites faithful souls to himself, some coming to
be baptized, others leaving this world for the kingdom of heaven. We are all invited to this
wedding feast – all of us who have received faith in Christ and the seal of baptism. This table
set before us is that of which it is said: You have prepared a table before me in the sight of
those who trouble me. Here is the showbread, here the fatted calf, here the lamb who takes
away the sins of the world. Here is the living bread come down from heaven, here placed
before us is the chalice of the New Covenant, here are the gospels and the letters of the
apostles, here the books of Moses and the prophets. It is as though a dish containing every
delight was brought and set before us. What more then can we desire? What reason is
there for choosing the first seats? There is plenty for all no matter where we sit. There is
nothing we shall lack.”
• St. Bruno of Segni: “But whomever you may be who still desire the first place here – go and
sit in the last place. Do not be lifted up by pride, inflated by knowledge, elated by nobility, but
the greater you are the more you must humble yourself in every way, and you will find grace
with God. In his own time he will say to you, Friend, go up higher, and then you will be
honored by all who sit at table with you. Moses sat in the last place whenever he had the
choice. When the Lord, wishing to send him to the Israelites, invited him to take a higher
place, his answer was: I beg you, Lord, send someone else. I am not a good speaker. It
was the same as saying: ‘I am not worthy of so great an office.’ Saul, too, was of small
account in his own eyes when the Lord make him king. And Jeremiah, similarly, was afraid
of rising to the first place: Ah, Lord God, he said, look, I cannot speak – I am only a child. In
the Church, then, the first seat, or highest place, is to be sought not by ambition but by
humility; not by money but by holiness.”
• Hans Urs von Balthasar: “One cannot really practice humility, for then he is trying to attain
something. No one who has humility can know or establish that fact. One can only express
that negatively: a man ought not to seek that for himself. For if he does not, then he will not
place himself in the most prestigious place, where he can be seen, held in respect, and
valued highly. Neither will he calculatingly invite to his banquet those who will invite him
back. If he takes the lowest place, he does not do this calculatingly, in order to be
considered humble.”
• Hans Urs von Balthasar: “If he is asked to move to a higher seat, his joy is not for himself
but because he experiences the host’s good will. He simply does not assess himself,
because he has no interest in the rank he occupies among men. If the Lord tells him that his
attitude will ‘be rewarded in the resurrection of the just,’ presumably to him this means simply
that he will be present with God. For only this concerns him: that God is so infinitely higher in
goodness, power, and majesty than he is.”
• Hans Urs von Balthasar: “God is honored only by those who make nothing of themselves,
for God too makes nothing of himself, since he simply is He who is, the Lord, the Mighty One.
 He is the One who hands out good gifts, hence a man ought not to put on airs of
‘magnanimity’ and patronizing gift-giving. He may have received many goods, other people
may consider him important, but he himself knows that he owes all he has been given to the
only Magnanimous One. He is all ears for the wisdom of God, for that is his joy, a joy that
makes him forget himself.”

5. Examples from the Saints and Other Exemplars

• St. Ignatius of Loyola, Principle and Foundation of the Spiritual Exercises: “For this it is
necessary to make ourselves indifferent to all created things in all that is allowed to the
choice of our free will and is not prohibited to it; so that, on our part, we want not health
rather than sickness, riches rather than poverty, honor rather than dishonor, long rather than
short life, and so in all the rest; desiring and choosing only what is most conducive for us to
the end for which we are created.”
• St. Jose Escriva: “Together with humility, the realization of the greatness of man’s dignity –
and of the overwhelming fact that, by grace, we are made children of God – forms a single
attitude. It is not our own efforts that save us and give us life; it is the grace of God. This is a
truth which must never be forgotten.”
• George Herbert: “Humble we must be, if to heaven we go; /High is the roof there, but the
gate is low.”

6. Quotations from Pope Benedict XVI

• “Basically, there are only these two possibilities for a fundamental option: self-realization, in
which man tries to create himself, by possessing his being completely by himself, by having
the totality of his life exclusively for and through himself, and on the other hand the option of
faith and love. This option is at the same time a decision for the truth. As we are creatures,
we are not so by ourselves. We cannot make ourselves; we can only ‘lose’ our life or we can
keep it. These options correspond to the content of the verb ‘to have’ and ‘to be’. Self-
realization wants to have life, al the possibilities, the joy, the beauty of life, because it
considers life as a possession to be defended against others. Faith and love do not imply
possession. They are options for the mutual interchange of love, for the majesty of truth… A
way of life based on having is a dead life, full of dead things. Only to cultivate love is to
cultivate life: ‘Whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life…will save it’
(Mark 8:35).”
• “Self-realization is a travesty of life, considering it to be a possession, so that it becomes a
service of death. Conversion is the action of choosing to make a response to love, openness
to allowing ourselves to be formed by truth, to become cooperators with the truth as St. John
says (3John 8). Consequently, conversion is true realism, which makes us able for a work
that is truly communal and human.”
• “Man seeks to attain to it by freeing himself from God and his creaturely status, setting
himself up and centering on himself, when, in a word, he becomes completely grown up and
emancipated, casting off childhood entirely as a mode of being, then he ends up as nothing,
 because he is setting himself against the truth of his being, which is to refer everything to
God. It is only by preserving the innermost heart of childhood, the existence, that is, of Son
as lived by Jesus, that human enters with the Son into divinity.”
• “From what it is said of being poor, therefore, it becomes sufficiently clear what is meant by
being children: the child possesses nothing of itself; it receives all it needs for life from others.
The child is free; it does not make any attempt to hide what it really is.”
• “Possession and power are man’s two great shackles by which we become imprisoned,
through having and through giving our hearts to these things. Anyone who, by having, is not
able to remain poor at heart and to recognize that the world is in God’s hands and not ours,
will have lost that childlikeness without which we cannot enter the Kingdom.”

7. Other Considerations

• Jesus is not simply chiding the guests to be shrewd players at the game of public recognition.
He tells them to take the ‘last place” Moreover, anther word for honor is glory – which hints
at the glory that belongs to God, and the recognition that only He can bestow on others.
True humility thus opens the disciple to a knowledge of self-worth not measured by one’s
peers but by the dignity bestowed by God.

Recommended Resources

Pope Benedict XVI, Journey to Easter, New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1987.
Darrell L. Bock, Luke Vol 2, 9:51-24:53, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament,
Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996.
Christ Our Light: Readings on Gospel Themes II, Ordinary Time, trans. And ed. By Friends of
Henry Ashworth, Exordium Books, 1985.
Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke, Sacra Pagina Series, vol. 3, ed. By Daniel J
Harrington, Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1991.
The Navarre Bible: St. Luke, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1998.
The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol ix, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995.
Hans Urs von Balthasar, Light of the World: Brief Reflections on the Sunday Readings, trans.
Dennis D. Martin, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993.