The chalice I used for Mass today belonged to my grandmother's cousin, Fr. Raymond Bedard, who died in 2007. While he was a student at Montréal's Grand Séminaire, that chalice was consecrated by Cardinal Léger.
Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time C
Paul-Émile
Léger became the Archbishop of Montréal in 1950,
He
was one of the most powerful men in Canada
and a distinguished figure at the Second Vatican Council.
Rather
suddenly, on April 20, 1968, he resigned his office,
leaving
behind his red robes as a Cardinal,
the
miter he wore and the crosier he carried as an Archbishop—
basically
disappearing from public life.
A few years
later, a Canadian journalist tracked him down
and
went to interview him:
in Africa, living
in a trailer,
among lepers and the disabled
among lepers and the disabled
on
the outskirts of a small village in Cameroon.
The
journalist’s main question: “Why?”
It
will be the great scandal of the history of our century
that
600 million people are eating well and living luxuriously
and
three billion people starve,
and
every year millions of children are dying of hunger.
I
am too old to change all that.
The
only thing I can do which makes sense is to be present.
I
must simply be in the midst of them.
So,
just tell people in Canada that you met an old priest.
I
am a priest who is happy to be old and still a priest
and
among those who suffer.
I
am happy to be here and to take them into my heart
The
Cardinal died in 1991 at the age of 87.
Genuine
humility is about knowing who you are and who you aren’t:
acknowledging,
yes, your faults and weaknesses,
but
also recognizing your true gifts and strengths.
(We
don’t do anybody any favors
when
we attempt to hide our abilities…
and
certainly fail to show proper gratitude to the One who gave them.)
But
while humility is a matter of recognizing who I really am,
it
is also a matter of recognizing who God really is.
On
the most basic level,
it
means accepting the fact that I am not God—
that
I am not the real center of things,
not
the one who gets to call all the shots.
But
it also means being able to distinguish
just
how God operates:
the
Creator of all coming down from the heights of heaven
to
share our life here on earth;
the
mighty Lord who is undying,
willingly
descending to the cold, dark depths of the grave.
The
humble Christian believes that his God—
who
took human flesh in Jesus—
was
not afraid to get his hands dirty;
not
afraid to hang around with sinners, the sick, and the poor;
not
afraid to take the last place.
This
is not a god who dwells in fire and stormcloud
to
keep his people at a fearful distance;
instead,
our God has made himself as approachable
as
a baby lying in a manger;
as a scrap of bread and a sip of wine
set
out on the table for guests.
We
Christians believe that God humbles himself, time and again—
bending
low to draw us close and lift us higher.
And
we who call ourselves Christians are
to do likewise.
In
the days of Jesus, poor, backwater Galilee
was
clearly full of very important people—
or,
at least, folks who thought themselves to be pretty special.
Things
aren’t so different here in twenty-first century Malone.
Whatever
our social standing might be;
regardless
of our résumé, our bank account, or political connections—
we
all have those moments when we crave to be noticed,
when
we long to show others how it’s done,
or when
we expect an exception be made to the rule just for us.
How
very different all that is from
the way of Christ!
Invite the poor, the
crippled, the lame, the blind—Jesus
tells us;
blessed indeed will you be because of their inability
to repay you.
As
we see in the life of Cardinal Léger,
the
secret to real greatness
is
not in proving that you’re somebody;
rather,
it’s in acknowledging that all of those around you—
rich
or poor, weak or strong, friend or foe—
are
in fact somebody:
they’re somebody who matters to you
because they’re somebody who matters even more to God.
The
humble way of Jesus
is being present to our least brothers and sisters
and taking them into our hearts;
about
bending low to draw them close
and
so lift them higher.
We
do not heed Christ’s command and take the last place
because we’re quietly hoping he’ll move us up later on.
Actually,
being in the lowest place is already to be exalted,
because
it’s precisely there
that we find ourselves in the place of honor,
right next to Jesus:
that we find ourselves in the place of honor,
right next to Jesus:
it’s
among the humble and the lowly
that
God has chosen to dwell.
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