The advice in this Gospel is for us whether we are the guest or the hostess. But it is not simply suggestions about etiquette. Something more is going on here. What Jesus advocates is not only for social occasions, but it’s meant to shape the entirety of our lives.
Jesus is advising us against staying in in our comfort zone. Rather than limiting our guest list to people who are clones of ourselves, people with whom we’re comfortable, who don’t threaten or even challenge us, Jesus encourages us to instead invite those who are different, people who make us uncomfortable, but whose difference from us may bring with it a blessing.
Repeatedly Jesus takes the low seat and invites unlikely types to be his guests. Those who come to his banquet make it through the narrow door because they claim no merit of their own. Jesus leaves the comfort zone of his place by his Father to come to earth as a tiny, helpless child. He leaves the comfort zone of earthly life, and allows himself to be placed in a narrow grave.
How can we move out of our comfort zone?
+ Develop a deeper spirituality,
+ Engage in service, – sit next to a stranger or a person you recognize but want to know better. It could even be a person you’ve lived with for years but who still feels like a stranger.
+ Help others on their spiritual journey – it’s amazing how you will change,
+ Keep saying “no” to the ways of the world and “yes” to the ways of God.
Jesus asks us that we do him the honor of keeping ourselves, our religion, our community from becoming trapped in some comfort zone. For us in this Benedictine community, with the move to a new monastery in 2014 and all that involved choosing what to keep and what to divest ourselves of in gifts others was a daily reality. We place great trust in God to guide us as we refuse to linger very long in any comfort zone, moving always past safety to encounter unexpected challenges to follow the crucified and risen One. This is what it means to live the life of faith – a life on the ladder of humility as described in the Rule of Benedict … living in reverence and deference to others.
As Perpetual Adoration Benedictine Sister Mary Jane Romero puts it: As a sister grows in humility, she is transformed interiorly, and it overflows into her exterior behavior. She possesses a dignity that expresses her reverent attitude toward God, her sisters, and all of life.
Joan Chittister says it this way: Humility and contemplation are the invisible twins of the spiritual life. (I like the symbol of twins … perhaps inspired by the image of Benedict and his twin sister.) She continues: One without the other is impossible. In the first place, there is no such thing as a contemplative life without the humility that takes us beyond the myth of our own grandeur to the cosmic grandeur of God. Humility enables me to stand before the world in awe, to receive its gifts and to learn from its lessons. But to be humble is not to be diminished. Indeed, humility and humiliations are not the same thing. Humility is the ability to recognize my right place in the universe, both dust and glory; God’s glory, indeed, but dust, nevertheless. Being realistic about the self, the mind is free to become full of God.
Or consider this from Eugene Boylan in his book THIS TREMENDOUS LOVER: In the practice of humility, it is a very sound principle never to display a humility that is not sincere. (Recall what Benedict directs: strive not to be called holy; rather, be holy.) Frequent meditation on the Passion will bring us more quickly to humility than anything else, and while humility is dependent upon true self-knowledge, such knowledge is better obtained by studying what God is, than what we ourselves are.
A final thought …Humility is like underwear, essential, but indecent if it shows.
~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB
