Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

“ … when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Cor: 12:10

Years ago, I worked as a therapist at a famous alcohol and drug treatment center in California. It was a place that attracted many movie and rock stars of that era. In a therapy group that I was leading, one of the attendees was a well-known African American man who had spent years entertaining as a singer and dancer. I remember he was a little man with a great big smile on his face.  

On one particular day, however, he was not smiling. The group he was a part of had been given an assignment to read a certain article and write their response. As I went around the circle asking each person to read what they had written to the rest of the group, I noticed this great entertainer subtly moving his chair back little by little as his turn came closer.  

Then it occurred to me: he either can’t read or write!

So, I simply passed over him and went on with the rest of the group. Afterwards, he came up to me and thanked me for not putting him in an embarrassing situation.  

He then went on: “I’ve been on stage since I was three years old. I can’t read or write.” I then asked him how he signed the papers to get into a place like the Center we were then in. “I had my chauffeur do it for me,” he said.

I was stunned by that admission. But even more so by what he said next: “Many times through the years, I began the effort to learn how to read and write. But somewhere along the way I decided I wanted to use this embarrassment as a means of humbling me.” “What do you mean?” I asked him. “Well,” he said, “in the world I live in it’s so easy to get carried away with your own specialness. I wanted to make sure I always remembered what I came from and how enormously lucky I am to have had the success I’ve had. It could have gone another way. But the good Lord blessed me with some talents. I don’t ever want to forget that. This is my way of not forgetting.”
He ended by saying: “I was fighting with myself today as to whether or not to tell the group. But you decided for me. It’s so embarrassing. It’s so humbling. But it’s good for me at the same time.”

“… when I am weak, then I am strong.”

That’s the way St. Paul put the same idea. He also told us that he repeatedly asked God to relieve him of a terrible wound he bore in his body. Then he discovered that it was precisely because of that wound that he was able to open himself up more completely to God’s grace working through him.
Like that singer/entertainer, it was Paul’s way of emptying himself of his ego.

Today’s gospel also tells a story of weakness, of a humbling experience. And the person who is rebuffed is none other than Jesus himself. 

The same Jesus who healed a woman by curing her of years of bleeding; the same Jesus who raised up the “little child” thought to be dead; the same Jesus who astonished large groups with his prophetic insight and wisdom; is dismissed by the people in his hometown as being “offensive,” says Mark’s gospel.  

Instead of being amazed and astonished, the hometown crowd is put off by all of this. Who does this guy that used to live right down the street from us think he is, they ask themselves?
Jesus is now the one who is left flabbergasted – astounded by their lack of acceptance and faith. On a purely human level, he was humbled – just as he was when he went into the desert and was severely tempted by Satan; just as he would be when he was nailed to a cross naked before the world.

According to the great spiritual writers, humility is the ultimate divine quality. All the other virtues depend on it. The word is based on the Latin word “humus” meaning “earth.” A truly humble person, then, is someone who is “grounded”, who has their feet firmly planted on the earth, who knows clearly who they are and who they are not. Specifically, that they are not God.     

Humility is so important a virtue, in fact, that the Bible begins with a story that highlights it. It’s the story about Adam and Eve.
If you remember, God creates a wondrous garden and places these two people in it. He then tells them, in effect, to enjoy everything in this marvelous garden, except for one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Stay away from that and everything will be fine.

Why would God ask them not to eat from that particular tree? Because the tree represents our human desire for certitude, for being all-knowing and all-complete within ourselves, our human desire to be God. The tree represents our refusal to want to learn from failure, from the journey that will teach us how dependent we are on one another and ultimately on God.
Adam and Eve “fall” in this story. They opt for what the serpent whispers in their ears – and is still whispering in ours: that we humans can become God; that we can be filled with power and rule over everything.

What God wants us to know is that it is in our brokenness, in our failures, even in our sins that we will be able to open ourselves up to the possibility of God’s grace rushing in and filling the void. 

This is why Alcoholics Anonymous ranks the admission of “powerlessness” as the First Step towards recovery. This is why the gospels rank “poverty of spirit,” humility, as the first among virtues. It is so necessary because without poverty of spirit God cannot slowly evolve our consciousness in a way that will change us and convert us.  

As one writer puts it: “Until and unless there is a person, situation, event, idea, or relationship that you cannot ‘manage,’ you will never find the True Manager.“ The gospel puts it another way: “Unless the grain of wheat falls on the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies, it will yield a rich harvest.” 

Humility is all about dying – dying to our false self, our ego – dominated self. Without that death, we won’t allow ourselves to be weak and vulnerable enough to allow God’s grace – his gift of himself – to find a space where he can “dwell among us.”    
That’s why St. Paul could so gladly and triumphantly say: 
“ … when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Ted Wolgamot, Psy.D.

NOTE: Some of you may be interested in a book I’m reading that presents a very thorough presentation of the political history of the Catholic Church in America. Entitled   Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States, and written by Massimo Faggioli, a Catholic historian and theologian who teaches at Villanova University, it provides an insightful historical overview of Catholicism in US politics, and “its place as an anchor in the life of the man elected to lead the country at a decisive crossroads, an unprecedented moment in US history.”