by Father John P. Cush, STD
Luke tells us that Jesus has been invited to dine at the home of a leading Pharisee. He is being “observed carefully,” but — as is often the case with our Lord — he is also observing. What he sees is a subtle yet telling movement of the heart: The guests are jockeying for the best seats. This prompts him to tell a parable that at first sounds like polite social advice, but in reality cuts to the deepest truth about the kingdom of God. The real question isn’t about where we sit at a dinner party — it’s about the posture of our soul before God.
Sirach counsels us: “Conduct your affairs with humility, and you will be loved more than a giver of gifts. … Humble yourself the more, the greater you are, and you will find favor with God.”
For the people of Israel, humility is not self-deprecation but self-placement before the truth — knowing who God is, and who we are before him. Pride is the distortion of that truth; humility is its acceptance. St. Augustine would later put it simply: “The foundation of the Christian life is first humility, second humility, and third humility.” Pride closes the door to grace; humility opens it wide. The Letter to the Hebrews contrasts two mountains. The first is Sinai — fearsome, trembling, and shrouded in smoke — where the Old Covenant was given, and where even Moses said, “I am terrified and trembling.” The second is Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, where we approach “innumerable angels in festal gathering” and “Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant.”
The proud heart sees only Sinai — God as a distant lawgiver to be appeased. The humble heart sees Zion — God as the gracious host, inviting us into his banquet. But to enter Zion’s gates, one must be small enough to fit through them. That is the work of humility.
In Luke’s parable, those who scramble for the highest places will be told to give way, and they will be shamed; those who take the lowest places will be invited higher. Jesus is not giving his disciples a strategy for social advancement. He is describing the way God’s kingdom works:
“In this world, you might claw for recognition. In God’s world, you can only receive a place — it is always an invitation, never a demand.”
And the second part of his teaching today goes even further. “When you give a banquet, do not invite those who can pay you back — friends, relatives, rich neighbors — but the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” This is a reflection of God’s own way: He invites those who cannot possibly repay him. As St. Gregory the Great taught, “When we give to those who cannot repay, we are imitating God himself, who gives to us when we could not return anything worthy.”
St. John Chrysostom noted that the honor given to the humble comes not from their own seeking, but from God’s lifting them up: “The more humble a man is, the more exalted he becomes in the sight of God.” In Jesus’ life, humility and glory are not opposites — they are two sides of the same coin. The self-emptying (kenosis) of the cross is the path to the exaltation of the Resurrection. To sit at the lowest place is to sit where Christ sits — among the poor, the rejected, the least.
Every Mass is a foretaste of the heavenly banquet. When we come forward to receive the Eucharist, we are all beggars before God. No one here has earned this food; it is all a pure gift. The liturgy trains us in humility: we confess our sins, we acknowledge our unworthiness (“Lord, I am not worthy …”), and we stretch out empty hands or humbly open our mouths to receive what only God can give. In the Eucharist, we learn to take the lowest place — and in doing so, we are lifted into communion with Christ himself.
Humility is not humiliation; it is liberation. It frees us from the exhausting competition for honor and frees us to receive from God. When we take the lowest place, we find that Christ is already there — and he says to us, “Friend, move up higher.”
Let us conduct our lives with humility, invite those who cannot repay us, and come to this altar with empty hands and open hearts. The lowest place, in the kingdom of God, turns out to be the place of highest joy.
Father John P. Cush, STD, is professor of fundamental and dogmatic theology at St. Joseph’s Seminary and College (Dunwoodie), Yonkers, New York.