22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, C August 28, 2022
Fr. Alexander Albert St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette
Strive for grace. That’s what I left you with last week, a challenge to not worry about things beyond you and to persevere in getting grace from God because only grace gets us to heaven. But what does it mean to strive after grace? And what will that grace mean for the people who are in our lives, the people we hope to bring to heaven with us?
Although complex in what it says, the point of our second reading is a good starting point for that answer. “You have not approached what can be touched… No, you have approached Mount Zion.” What “can be touched” is a reference both to the material world and to the old covenant ritual and cultural practices. Kosher laws and animal sacrifice were a part of God’s plan, but they don’t get people to heaven.
So, what about Mount Zion and the angels, saints, God, and Jesus? Mount Zion is a reference to heaven and this letter to the Hebrews is stressing this fact: Baptism has made us members of the one, true Church. And that Church is the channel of God’s grace into the world. Although Catholicism is also filled with rituals and symbols, the heart of it is a relationship to Jesus Christ. The Sacraments are symbols, but they are efficacious symbols. Baptism doesn’t just symbolize the forgiveness of sins, it actually forgives them. Why? Because Jesus Christ is there, in that moment, giving grace through those words and actions.
So, when I say “strive after grace,” I mean through the sacraments and this rich network of supernatural relationships. The firstborn in heaven are saints who can and do pray for you. The angels intercede and protect and guide you. The “assembly” is the Church across time and space all centered on the one God who became man in Jesus Christ. Strive after grace by encountering Jesus in the sacraments and following after him in the network of spiritual relationships that is the Church.
Following him means what, exactly? Doing what Jesus tells us. That’s why I’m so insistent on everyone reading Scripture and studying Church teaching. Learn what Jesus tells us and then do it. A great example, a great place to start is what we hear today. Seek the lowest place at a feast. Invite the poor to your banquets. Yes, that is a literal command and no, sitting in the back of Church isn’t all that it means.
This is a parable so there’s more to it, of course. If we frame other decisions in this light, we get some interesting things to reflect on. Try to imagine your whole life as a kind of banquet. Where do you try to “sit” so-to-speak in the banquet of life? Are you chasing the seat of honor – the promotions, the fame, the wealth? Are you trying to sit closest to the food or wine – focusing on comfort and convenience in your big life decisions? Are you trying to hide in the corner – simply wanting to be left alone and not deal with people and their problems? And when you have occasion to invite others into your success, do you only invite people into your life who can repay you with opportunities, wealth, fun?
It’s perfectly natural to want success, comfort, pleasure. It’s normal to want a return on our investment: whether that’s money, time, or relationships. That’s not necessarily wrong. The problem is our fallenness. The problem is that we all tend to make things about ourselves. Pride, Greed, Lust sneak into our intentions and make us miss the point of life, which of course is love.
But not love of self. It is love of God and love of others for the sake of God. Jesus tells us to seek the lowest place to directly counteract the subtle selfishness that sneaks into even our good decisions. Jesus doesn’t want us to be miserable, but he also doesn’t want us to confuse success in this world with real success. That success is the grace of God, His love and power in us. No seat of honor at the banquet of this world, no amount of networking with the rich and powerful is will get us grace.
Let’s make this more specific, incarnational. In the banquet of life, where is Jeanerette? What proverbial seat is it? Neither Jeanerette nor St. John the Evangelist Church is a “seat of honor” in economic, political, or social terms. So why do people choose it? Some out of habit. Some have no choice. Some because they are uniquely successful here. But, according to Jesus’ first parable today, what is the best reason to choose something in life? Humility. And what about that second parable of inviting the poor? Love. The best reason to choose a home, a career, a particular relationship is out of humility and love. Humility is not self-hatred, it’s a self-awareness that, left unchecked, our pride could get in the way. Humility seeks to be with the lowly to keep oneself lowly. Love seeks the lowly because it loves them.
Yes, according to worldly standards, Jeanerette and St. John’s are lowly places. But do not misunderstand me! I have said before – and I believe it – that we are not out for the count. We have real potential for success… success in what really matters, if we strive to make that potential into a reality.
What does Jeanerette need most? What does this church parish need most? People who choose it for the right reasons: humility and love and grace. What this parish needs, what this town needs is good people, people who aren’t here because it fits their desire for wealth, power or comfort, but people who are here because they want grace and who know that grace comes from choosing to love. I’ve said it in dozens of conversations: the resource Jeanerette needs most is competent people who want to be here, who want to be with the lowly, to invite those in need into the feast of what God has given them.
I don’t just mean people giving money to the poor box. I mean people giving themselves to their neighbors. Why are you here? Because it fits your agenda, your desire for wealth, power, or pleasure? Or because you know that everyone humbles himself will be exalted? Because you have something to share with the people who are here? Because you find grace here for yourself and those you love. Seek the place of grace, of humility, of love and invest in it for their sake, not just your own. And if you’re somewhere because you have no other options, it’s not yet a choice for that place. If providence left us no other options, we still need to come to the point of choosing to be somewhere wholeheartedly, to choose these people and this place with love. Why? Because God is love and where God is, there is eternal life.