by Deacon Bob Macaluso 

I have a confession to make. But I’ll get to it later because, after all, you can’t rush a good confession, and I haven’t finished examining my conscience yet anyway. For now, let me begin by telling you that long before I understood what Jesus meant when he said, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be exalted,” the sound and rhythm alone of these words from today’s Gospel according to Matthew made me stand up straight and listen when I heard them for the first time at age 12. 

The priest from my home parish of Our Lady Queen of Martyrs in Forest Hills, New York, who proclaimed the Gospel story that included this well-known verse, was Msgr. John Lavin, ordained in 1964 right before the close of Vatican II, and who, several years later, trained a group of us “street urchins,” as he called us, to become lectors by teaching us to project and inflect our voices, while using natural and dramatic pauses when necessary, to convey the message of the reading. 

Not one of us, however, could imitate his reading of Scripture. Through a voice that matched the depth of his faith, Msgr. Lavin brought those memorable words of Jesus to life. I have been intrigued by this verse in Matthew’s Gospel ever since, and because of the way he read it, I have examined my conscience many times to see how it fits into my life. 

I have no doubt that I’ve exalted myself more often than I’ve humbled myself. Yet, in my younger days especially, some of my words and actions could have passed as harmless, but they were nevertheless inconsiderate of others, like the time I announced my A grade on a high school history test to one of my classmates who after struggling in that class, was excited to tell me, his friend, that he had earned a grade of B-. 

On the other hand, I humbled myself at times, or so I thought. When I was at Cathedral Prep High School and minor seminary — on the road to becoming a priest — I played basketball on the freshmen team. One day a priest faculty member, after seeing me practice, told me that I had “wonderful prowess on the court.” Can you imagine my remembering his exact words? 

I thanked him for his compliment, but I was inflated by what he said and secretly wished he would share his impression with my teammates who might then think of me as the star of the team. Even in the humility of gratitude for a compliment, my need for recognition got away from me. Maybe this is why God called me to be a deacon, but not a priest. 

I could update my confession to include more recent sins, of course, which you would probably enjoy more than I, but I’m sure you realize that violations of Jesus’ message about truly humbling ourselves instead of exalting ourselves follow us well into adulthood and may show themselves in ways we might prefer not to admit. 

Well, I told you that I had a confession to make, but it would be a mistake for any of us to fix our gaze on our failures, or worse, on the failures of others, instead of on our opportunities. So, let’s reflect on the Gospel’s opening verses — instead of relying too heavily on the last verse — to see what Jesus expects of us. 

It might strike us as odd — even out of character — for Jesus to be commending the knowledge and wisdom of his lifelong adversaries, the Pharisees, and then to instruct his disciples and the crowds gathered around them to “do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you.” And yet, in the next breath, Jesus warns them to not follow their example because the Pharisees do not practice what they preach. There’s a message for us, too, in that warning. 

But it’s not for us to be suspicious and critical of the religious leaders in our own day and time, from the pope on down, and to use them for target practice by picking off their sins and pointing a finger at their hypocrisy. Jesus is using the Pharisees to demonstrate the potential for hypocrisy in each one of us, and its adverse effect on those we may be trying to influence or teach … everyone from our children to our friends to those observing our behavior in restaurants, at concerts, walking our dogs on the streets, or wherever it’s possible for people to see discrepancies between our principles and our practices. Even 12-year-olds — like me in 1964 — can spot them. They’re evident in our speech, our behavior, our body language, and even in our voice. 

I was moved back then, by the magnitude of a Gospel verse communicated through the voice of a priest with no trace of hypocrisy or any other sinful behavior that might have lessened his impact on my life and my Christian education. His principles matched his practices. 

We need good teachers today — teachers like Jesus, who was devoid of hypocrisy. All of us can be that kind of teacher and leader in our Church, who may someday have the opportunity, as Msgr. Lavin did, to inspire a 12-year-old boy or girl, if not through our voices then perhaps through our virtues, long before she, too, like me at that age, could fathom what Jesus meant when he said, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”