Labor Day, a national holiday since 1894, is an invitation to take pride in our work and to recommit ourselves to doing our life’s work as best we can.
Whatever our work may be, do it well! That’s what holiness is all about. To paraphrase Blessed John Henry Newman, God has committed some work to each one of us that He hasn’t committed to another. In other words, each one of us has a mission, a purpose in life. Aim to please God. Act justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly with God.
The word of God takes us back to the wisdom literature of ancient Israel, the book of Sirach. The author, Ben Sira, asks us to be humble, to recognize who we really are: mere creatures absolutely dependent upon an all-good Creator. We each appear on this earth at one particular moment at birth, and then disappear at another particular moment in death.
The biblical author challenges us to remember that no matter how famous or powerful or wealthy, we are what we are by the grace or favor of God. Hence, do all the good we can. In all the ways we can. In all the places we can. At all the times we can. For all the people we can. As long as ever we can. The good we do in this life--that’s the only thing that we will take with us to God in death.
The letter to the Hebrews contrasts two assemblies, one at Mount Sinai where God made a covenant with the Hebrews in the midst of thunder and lightning; and the other assembly in the heavenly Jerusalem where countless creatures, angelic as well as human, celebrate the new covenant or relationship God made with us through the bloody death and glorious resurrection of Jesus. Yes, God has bestowed his favor, his grace upon us in the waters of baptism and has transformed us into His sons and daughters, coheirs to the kingdom of God. The author rightly challenges us to live a life worthy of this status.
In the Gospel, Jesus is again sitting at a table. He already had a reputation for ignoring the common dinner etiquette.
At this Sabbath dinner, after seeing how the so-called rich and famous proudly took the places of honor at the table, Jesus told a parable in which he compares the kingdom of God to a celestial banquet. All are welcome. But who will be seated at the table? The humble, the people we may least expect to see. The 20th century Catholic novelist Flannery O’Connor captures this scene powerfully in her short story “Revelation.”
Jesus teaches us, “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be…For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."
Now humility doesn’t mean being a doormat or cipher. Nor should it be associated with lack of self-esteem. The word “humility” derives from the Latin word humus, “ground” or “soil,” understood simply as down-to-earth, knowing who we are, where we came from, and where we’re going. Humility is grasping the truth about ourselves as mere creatures.
Mary, Mother of God, showed what humility is in her song titled the Magnificat: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord … because God the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name.” Yes, Mary rejoiced in the gifts or favors God bestowed upon her, but she, a creature, recognized that God was the giver of every favor she had. So too should we rejoice in the gifts God has bestowed upon us.
Pride is the opposite of humility. Pride thinks we are self-sufficient, as if there’s no God, as if we are accountable only to ourselves. Chapters 1 through 11 in the book of Genesis gives us an insight into humility. God made us in His image and likeness. That is our dignity. But then, we overstepped our limits and preferred to play God. We wanted to be number one. And what happened? The legendary Adam and Eve broke all their relationships. They hid from God, they blamed each other for their misfortune, and the land barely produced their sustenance. They sinned. They fell from grace.
To break off our relationship with God, the source of life, is to cut off our air supply, so to speak, to die in a sense. Hence, we are born into a broken world. That is the Catholic understanding of original sin, a phrase St. Augustine coined. We are like Adam and Eve, and the other characters in the Genesis stories. They mirror humankind: trying to play God, inciting violence, perpetuating injustices, forgetting God, and building monuments to themselves like the Tower of Babel. If we still don’t think something’s out of kilter in this world, look at the daily news.
Yes, Genesis tells a story about ourselves and the damage we do when we play God. That is pride. Humility is the opposite—recognizing that we are creatures with limitations, absolutely dependent upon an all-good God. Luckily, God had the final word, and God became one of us in Jesus of Nazareth. Through his death and resurrection, by the power of the Spirit, he reestablished a right relationship with God for us.
The Christian answer to the questions “Who are we? What is the purpose of our lives?” acknowledges the tensions at the very core of our being. We do what we know we shouldn’t do, or don’t do what we know we should do. Our lives are indeed transitory—the Bible repeatedly emphasizes this—and yet we possess an inner dignity: the triune God lives within our fragile selves. God dwells in us, and we dwell in God.
The Christian intellectual tradition emphatically says that there is no human solution to the brokenness in our world. But it goes on to say there is a power beyond us (God) that can heal this brokenness, and we can participate in this healing by doing good for others.
This awesome, all-good, and transcendent power became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth and is alive in our midst by the power of the Spirit. This same God invites us to live a life of discipleship with Jesus, to reflect the beatitudes in our daily lives, to recognize the likeness of God in every human being; and yes, to be generous with what we have, so that one day we, gloriously alive like Jesus Christ, can sit at the banquet of eternal life. Amen.
