Early
in the long running saga of the US Presidential election Donald Trump told us;
“Humility gets you nowhere!” He may have been half joking but he was also half
serious. A humble approach to those whose votes he seeks does not seem to be
his way. Instead he appears intent on bulldozing his way to the White House. He
is an easy target because he is in the news but perhaps mention of humility makes
many of us uncomfortable.
Humility
means accepting my total dependence. In A
Short History of Nearly Everything, American writer Bill Bryson explains
complex scientific information in simple terms. One fact, in particular,
gripped me. We cannot live unaided if we climb more than 10 km into the sky or
dive more than 10 km into the earth. In the whole universe, as far as we know, there
is just this 20 km corridor where we can live. And it only exists on one little
planet. Further, 64% of our planet is covered by water and therefore also
uninhabitable; and this is to say nothing of the deserts, high mountains and
polar regions. We are specks, grains of sand, inhabiting a tiny corner of a
vast space whose limits we cannot imagine. And this is only the beginning of
our dependence on nature.
We
are even more dependent on each other. Everything we are we have received. Georges
Bernanos, in A Diary of a Country Priest,
wrote that “all is gift.” It is a simple saying but it nourishes us with the truth
that no person is an island, no one is self-made. We receive and then we have
the joy of making something of what we receive and giving it to others.
The
Pharisee, in Jesus’ story about the two men who went to the temple to pray, did
the right things. He ticked all the boxes; prayer, fasting, giving alms. But he
ended up thinking he was perfect and needed no one else. The tax collector on
the other hand, knew his life was a mess. He had exploited his dependence on
others. He felt bad about it but didn’t know what to do. He felt, blocked,
helpless and broken. All he could do was cry out to God, “Be merciful to me!”
The
dependent person has no solutions. They look to others for grace, that is,
unconditional love in action. Such an attitude does not fit easily into a world
that prides itself on concrete solutions to concrete problems. There is no room
for grace in a “fix-it” society. We are called to hear again the words of Jesus
about the poor of spirit and the humble who will “inherit the earth.” (Matt
5:5)
23 October 2016 Sunday 30 C
Sira 35:12…18 2 Timothy 4:6…18 Luke18:9-14
