Tenth Sunday After Pentecost — Homily by Fr. Ermatinger

Translation of the Epistle for the Tenth Sunday After Pentecost

Brethren, You know that, when you were heathens, you went to dumb idols, according as you were led, Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man, speaking by the Spirit of God, saith Anathema to Jesus and no man can say, The Lord Jesus, but by the Holy Ghost. Now there are diversities of graces, but the same Spirit; and there are diversities of ministries, but the same Lord; and there are diversities of operations, but the same God, who workth all in all. And the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man unto profit. To one indeed, by the Spirit, is given the word of wisdom; and to another, the word of knowledge, according to the same Spirit; to another faith in the same Spirit; to another, the grace of healing in one Spirit; to another, the working of miracles; to another, prophecy; to another, the discerning of spirits; to another, divers kinds of tongues; to another, interpretation of speeches. But all these things one and the same Spirit works, dividing to every one according as He will.

Continuation of the Holy Gospel According to St. Luke

At that time, Jesus spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves as just and despised others. Two men went up into the temple to pray: the one was a Pharisee, and the other a Publican. The Pharisee standing, prayed thus with himself: O God, I give Thee thanks that I am not as the rest of men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers; as also is this Publican. I fast twice in the week; I give tithes of all that I possess. And the Publican standing afar off would not so much as lift up his eyes towards heaven, but struck his breast saying: O God, be merciful to me a sinner. I say to you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: because every one that exalts himself shall be humbled, and he that humbles himself shall be exalted. 

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. 

Transcription of Homily

Well, I would like to blame this tardiness on some vast Masonic Zionist plot to mess with my calendar, but it’s probably my fault, so we’ll just leave it at that.

This is a Gospel that is something of a favorite, and because of the richness there are levels too: There’s the obvious of what Our Lord says about this radical difference between the proud man, who’s really incapable of praying, and the humble man who moves Our Lord’s heart to such a point that a Lord can’t say no.

This virtue of humility is a very elusive one, I would say. Elusive in the sense that many don’t understand it; many don’t know exactly what it is. We might have a hard time giving it an apt description and when we see it, we recognize it. When we try to be it, we’re not convinced. And so, there’s a certain quality of it that is so sublime that we often misunderstand it. We might think that humility means I’m a doormat for others and that’s not necessarily the case – it ought not be the case. Humility, says Thomas Aquinas, means that I don’t strive for something beyond me, and therefore there’s certain limitations within which I work and thrive, and to wish it were other than is really kind of an assault on Our Lord, and on oneself, and on the nature of things.

It’s an interesting word, humility, because we also have the word, similar root – the same root is “humus” which means earth or ground or peat. And that’s also where we get the word for human. Why? Because humans are from the earth, right? God has made us out of the earth as we saw in Genesis in the beautiful creation account: Our Lord kneeling in the mud, fashioning this figure out of mud, and then blowing His רוּחַ (ruach), His divine life into it, and giving it life. And nonetheless, we remind it on Ash Wednesday, Remember, man, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. So, this, interesting too, is that the word “home” comes from the same root. So, we have ground, we have home, human, and humility. And I think it’s also not a coincidence, right?, because when you live in a family or in a community, you find out what your limits are and these certain rubbing against one will against another, right? We kind of find out our own limitations quite quickly when we live under the same roof as other people. And so, it does keep us humble, at least it should.

What’s interesting about this proud man, the Pharisee, is that he is incapable of prayer. He prays, but he’s incapable of communion with God. Why? Here in English, it’s translated as, He prayed thus with himself. So, what this translator did was take the Greek passive verb form that’s used. So, it’s a type of a praying to oneself. And this is what pride does. It closes us off from Our Lord and makes us incapable of truly communing with Him. And so, that’s why Luke says he prayed to himself. He’s not really speaking to God. He might think he’s speaking to God. He’s talking to himself about himself. He’s kind of this self-contained parody. And he makes of himself, and Our Lord makes of him, something of a caricature of the proud man. And nonetheless, it corresponds completely to reality.

And this other one, on the other hand, he doesn’t have the pride, the arrogance to even look up to heaven. Rather, he looks within himself. He looks down and pleads for mercy. And this is something that so moves the heart of the Father that He cannot say no. St. Augustine says in his City of God this, the following He says,

There’s something in self-abasement of humility that exalts the human heart, and something in pride which debases it. This seems to be a contradiction that loftiness should debase, and lowliness exalt. But pious humility enables us to submit to what is above us, and nothing is so far above us as God Himself.

And remember, too, that when Christ points to Himself, He doesn’t say, “Learn from me, I’m intellectual, I’m well studied; learn from me, I’m pure; learn from me, I’m powerful. – Learn from me, I’m meek and humble of heart… meek and humble of heart. This is what He first wants us to look at. This is what He last wants us to look at in Him as the model, the reference point, the standard for our own identity.

And this is why, as Catholics, we don’t look to the saints for our models because they were, each one was given, as we heard in the… Paul’s Epistle to the Corinthians, each one was given particular gifts in a particular time. If we try and imitate the saints, we set ourselves up for existential despair because we don’t have those same graces and we’re not going to be able to imitate Padre Pio, or Saint Veronica Giuliani, or Francis Assisi, and so many others. And the saints didn’t run around trying to imitate saints. The saints were imitating Christ’s meek and humble of heart in their station in life, in their time and place, according to their vocation.

And this is the great equalizer, the meek and humble heart of Our Lord, which calls us, which attracts us like a magnet, and says, Learn from me. And when we do learn from Him, we start to shed a lot of these things that the Pharisee has used to prop himself up, and we find that that’s actually a house of cards.

When Our Lady speaks of herself in the Magnificat, she says that the Lord has had regard for the humility of His handmaid That’s why He exalted her, placed her at the top. You can imagine how angry that makes Lucifer, the highest angel, who was toppled of his own sin and replaced by this little girl above all the angels, not because of her intellect, not because of her power, but because of humility. And this is something that orders our relationship with God, ourselves, and others.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, the Holy Ghost. Amen

— Fr. Ermatinger