Aug 26, 2013
Sirach
3:17-18, 20, 28-29
Psalm 68:4-7,10-11
Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24
Luke 14:1, 7-14
We come to the wedding banquet of heaven by way of humility and
charity. This is the fatherly instruction we hear in today's First
Reading, and the message of today's Gospel.
Jesus is not talking simply about good table manners. He is
revealing the way of the kingdom, in which the one who would be
greatest would be the servant of all (see Luke
22:24-27).
This is the way He showed us, humbling Himself to come among us as
a man (see
Philippians 2:5-8), as one who serves, as the bearer of
glad tidings to the poor (see Luke
4:18).
This is the way, too, that the Father has shown us down through the
ages - filling the hungry, sending the rich away empty, lifting up
the lowly, pulling down the proud (see Luke
1:52-53).
We again call to mind the Exodus in today's Psalm - how in His
goodness the Lord led the Israelites from imprisonment to
prosperity, rained down bread from heaven, made them His
inheritance, becoming a "Father of orphans."
We now too have gained a share of His inheritance. We are to live
humbly, knowing we are are not worthy to receive from His table
(see Luke
6:7; 15:21).
We are to give alms, remembering we were ransomed from sin by the
price of His blood (see
1
Corinthians 6:19-20).
The Lord promises that if we are humble we will be exalted and find
favor with God; that if we are kind to those who can never repay
us, we will atone for sins, and find blessing in the resurrection
of the righteous.
We anticipate the fulfillment of those promises in every Eucharist,
today's Epistle tells us. In the Mass, we enter the festal
gathering of the angels and the firstborn children of God, the
liturgy of the heavenly Jerusalem in which Jesus is the high
priest, the King who calls us to come up higher (see
Proverbs 25:6-7).