22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time

Our readings for the 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time are:

1. Sirach 3: 17-18, 20, 28-29
2. Psalms 68: 4-5, 6-7, 10-11
3. Hebrews 12: 18-19, 22-24a
4. Luke 14: 1, 7-14

• Finding humility
• When you think of humility, who are some of the examples to you?
• When I was a kid, one saying that was in circulation was "it's hard to be humble when you're as great as I am."  That chestnut was always delivered with a self-mocking air so that the speaker would not get shot down outright, but it speaks to an underlying conception that humility and greatness are somehow at odds with each other.
• Do you feel that a humble person somehow needs to downplay, hide, or camoflage their skills, talents, accomplishments?
• If someone came to you and asked you for some exercises (practices/habits) that they could adopt to foster greater humility, what would you give them?

• Making room for the forgotten
• How do people "fall through the cracks"?  For instance, an elderly widow may have relatives, but they are all from a younger generation, occupied with the pressures of getting their kids through college, finishing off a morgage, worrying about threatened budget cuts, and the like, so they never get any visitors.
• As a whole, what do these "invisible" people have to tell us about us as a culture?
• What can we do to change that within our families, our communities, our churches?

• Seeing is believing
• As Catholics, our sacramental life is replete with things that we can touch, smell, taste and hear (the so called "smells and bells" of our faith).  If all of those sacraments are there for one purpose, to point us to God, why are there so many?
• How can we, as liturgical ministers, make those sacramental experiences richer, more potent in terms of making the hevenly realities more immanent and accessible?
• How can the sacraments permeate/inform/illumine our lives and vice versa?

• Giving up the outcome
• In aerospace, we were pretty famous for hosting meetings that went nowhere.  The reasons for such time wasters were legion.  Folks didn't come prepared, the agenda was unclear, the hidden agenda was out of phase with the published agenda, the leader forgot, and invited Ron, when everyone knows that Ron will never let anything of consequence happen unless he's in charge, ...  When we endure something like that, the assessment can often be "there's an hour of my life that I'll never get back."
• If you were given a secret power that allowed you to predict whether something was going to be a success before you embarked on that effort, how would you use that ability?
• Let's take it a step further, and say that you could establish what you meant by "success", and this amazing power of yours would take that into account.
• Do you see God ever giving us such a capability?
• Why or why not?

Preparation for Reconciliation:

1. What am I willing to invest in order to achieve real humility?
2. Am I willing to bear the pain of what it means to be "forgotten" so that I can minister to the forgotten ones around me?
3. What about my life is not sacred that should be?
4. Am I willing to serve, with no thought for the benefits?

Kindness Anonymous

Pithy words of advice tell a great deal about the culture that spawned them.
In fact, I suspect that such bits of sage wisdom could easily be used
As a yardstick to measure changes in our culture as they happen.

"Never "google" an old girlfriend.  You'll never really like what you see."
If she's done well for herself, you'll kick yourself for not making it work.
And you'll wonder why the two of you went your separate ways.

If she's fallen from grace, and become some pale caricature of herself,
You may feel a moment of triumph and relief that you bailed when you did,
But then another part of you asks whether she would have been better with you.

Nowadays, fame, notoriety, publication if you will
Is so easy to come by, that a life of anonymity is unheard of,
And can rouse suspicions.  After all, the Unibomber was pretty private too.

There's scarcely any room anymore for quiet, unassuming virtues like kindness,
Extending a gentle hand when needed, saving a heart, wiping a tear, offering tea
Each of these acts of love has a sharp focus, one, maybe two at a time.

The love is extended, the event done, and everyone goes back to what they were about.
But a transformation has occurred in sharing a burden, a sacramental exchange of gifts
And Christ is remembered in the sharing of pains and sorrows, joys and triumphs,

Whether there was anyone there to record it and post it
Or not.

Shalom!