Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The Lord speaks of humility today. To be humble is to be holy and to be holy is to be humble. We often misunderstand humility to look foolish, to say yes to everything, to accept everything the others say or to be humble is to be poor, to live in a shack, to not have a penny in the bank. Humility is not this. I am not sure what it means for you. Humility is linked to love. We can’t love if we are not humble and we cannot be humble if we don’t love. It is a gift that the Lord gives. If you ask for it, prepare yourselves for humiliations. Humility is earned from humiliations. It is the only way. Only God can give us the gift of humility.
Look at our bodies which are very proud, very proud. It wants comfort, rest, it lives for itself. It thrives on pleasure and food. What else does your body want? It desires beauty and vanity, to be noticed, to stand out. The world says take care of your bodies. Your bodies should be healthy, and it is true we are temples of the Holy Spirit. We should care for them and not do whatever we want with it. But we have gone to the opposite extreme. We take absolute care of it; it becomes number one in our lives. The first thing in life is our bodies.
In this world of technology, photos and videos, we want to have the perfect photo of ourselves. People today take twenty selfies and delete nineteen of them, looking for the perfect one, and despising the other ones. This is arrogance and it makes us arrogant, and we are already proud. The world leads us in this way and then we live for ourselves.
Ask for humility and look for ways to humiliate our bodies with insults, clothes or pictures that make you look fat or ugly, choose whatever lowers your appearance. St. Francis would pay people to insult him in public, to tell him he was arrogant and a thief and many other things; he paid them to do this. He said when we was insulted, he was with Jesus Christ.
The gospel says at the wedding take the last place, but not as a strategy to get the better place and not be embarrassed or be exulted in front of others. This is not the reason. Take the last place because it is the place that corresponds to us; it is the place that corresponds to you. It changes how we see the panorama and how we can see our life. The Lord calls us to take the last place in your home, at your job, in the community, in the church. Why does he tell us this?
A Christian is in the last place because that is where Christ is and a Christian is with Christ. This is by far the best thing. The last place is first because it is to be with the Risen Lord. We are in the last place so we can rise with him and be exalted. What does it mean to be exalted? It means to be happy. In the last place you can be happy. Seek the last place and when we reach it what merit do you have? None. You are fired from your job, you are humiliated, they laugh at you, but then like St. Francis we can be with Christ. Humility is to be with Christ.
When we ask for humility, we will be hit hard in the pride of our bodies, the pride that is deeply rooted in us. Be prepared, brothers and sisters. Illness prepares us to take the last place. It is a help from the Lord; it is a blessing. What a delight when we accept that illness and accept being in the last place when they have to clean you, shave you, change you, wipe your nose, clean your butt, etc. For the last year of my mom’s life, I had the sense that when I was with her, I was with Christ. When you see a sick person, you can see Christ on the cross. Tell them that. Tell them to pray for you. Tell them, when you get to heaven, don’t forget me. I like to visit the sick for this reason. It helps me.
Illness prepares us for persecution, for slander when they speak ill of me and perhaps, I end up in jail unjustly and I know that wherever I end up I am there because of Christ. If that child helps you to be in the last place, that child comes from God. If your wife helps you to be in the last place, that is the wife you need. If your boss is a wretch, a slave driver, unfair, humiliates you and despises you, he is the one you need. Another boss would not unite you to Christ like this one. How slow we are to see these difficulties with faith. This is why we need the Church, the word of God, a community.
The holy humility is Christ. He put himself in the last place. To be in the last place is to be with Christ on the cross. Every time you are in the last place, you are nailed to the cross with Christ. You are united with him, like the two thieves, you are there with Christ. When you are in the last place you can have one of two attitudes as seen in these thieves. You can rebel and kick and scream like the bad thief or you can be like the lamb, the good thief. He entered his suffering; he was united with Christ and entered into a dialogue with him. The Lord told him today you will be with me in paradise, which means come up higher, come up and be in the first place with me.