Phil 2:5-11
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant,[a] being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
It is the great path of humility that the Lord walked for us, humbling Himself.
What was it that moved Him to leave His glory to take on our condition? In the first place, Jesus’ humility is a testimony of His love for the Father. The great desire of the Heart of Jesus is for us to recognise the immense love of the Father, so that the Father may be glorified through our lives as He was through His own. In this way the Lord shows us the meaning of our existence: to glorify God with our lives.
What does this mean? We are called to bear witness to the goodness of our Father before the heavenly Church and before the whole world. Everyone should know what God is like, what He does for us and what a great joy it is to serve Him. This truth was already attacked in Paradise when the devil questioned God’s goodness (cf. Gen 3:1-5). How many of His creatures live in confusion about God, unable to understand Him and His ways of salvation! As a result, they do not awaken to their dignity as children of God.
We are called to cooperate so that, through our witness, people may see the beauty of a life with God and come out of their confusion.
Surely God does not need us to glorify Him; it is we who enter into the reality of our existence. So it is always we who are blessed.
But once we have come to know God and have a living relationship with Him, we are called to go out, like Jesus, to seek people in every possible way; to become ‘all things to all people’ – as St Paul says elsewhere (1 Cor 9:22), to win as many as we can for the Kingdom of God, for all people should bow the knee at the name of Jesus and every tongue should confess ‘that Christ Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father’.
This is a very important hint from Scripture that shows us something of God’s plan of salvation. When this goal of evangelisation is abandoned, the missionary mandate is neglected.
Here, too, humility is required. Muslims and Jews, as well as all others, are called to confess the Lord and bow the knee before Him, having received the Good News from the Church. It is therefore neither arrogant nor presumptuous to insist that Jesus is the only Saviour and that the Church is necessary for salvation. On the contrary, it is humble to serve the truth. Unfortunately, we have to face the fact that today this could be considered retrograde and old-fashioned, even in the Church itself. What a huge mistake, as if the Lord could be wrong.
Let us look briefly at today’s Gospel (Lk 14:15-24), where we hear the sad fact that the invited guests did not enter the banquet of the Kingdom of God. They had put other things before it, and each found an excuse for not accepting the invitation.
Certainly this passage is to be interpreted primarily in relation to the Jews, and especially the religious leaders of the day, who did not accept the Lord’s invitation.
But we can look beyond that and apply it to us as Catholics. We have been invited in a special way because God has given us the grace to have grown up in the true Church or to have found our way to it.
Thus, two essential points are shown to us here:
1) We must always and everywhere follow God’s invitation.
2) We must see to it, as far as we are able, that the house is filled with guests.
But who will believe if faith is not proclaimed (cf. Rom 10:14-15)?
