A FOCUS ON SELF FORGETS GOD


WEDDNESDAY, FOURTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME  

2 Sam 24:2,8-17; Ps 32:1-2,5-7; Mk 6:1-6

Despised in His Homeland

Humility is such a powerful virtue that it can contain and hide God within human nature. This capacity of humility to house and conceal God prompts our consideration of God to be its sole cause in us. This follows because no one can build a house for God by their own effort without God working in them and cooperating with them. This is shown in the fact that man’s seeking of self after the original sin blinded him to God’s abiding presence in the created universe. So, humility cannot be a product of self or our effort without God. A clearer analogy for the idea is the case of a potential difference between an active and a passive material. It is usually the active material that induces the passivity in the passive material. Hence, the infinite perfection of God induces our awareness of our nothingness. God, by enabling us to see and know his infinite perfections to a degree, reveals our nothingness to us, thereby making us humble before his divine Majesty. Without the light of God’s word and grace, we cannot know how miserable we really are. Our recognition and acknowledgment of our power, authority, or any perfection demonstrates our blindness to the divine reality within us, for no man can boast of anything before God. Any self-inflation reveals we are bereft of the grace of God and blind to his goodness.

Within this ambit, we are able to grasp the nature of David’s sin in ordering the census of the people. The command to count the people was only an iceberg pointing to the hidden mindset that prompted him to give such an order. “King David said to Joab and to the senior army officers who were with him, ‘Now go throughout the tribes of Israel from Dan to Beersheba and take a census of the people; I wish to know the size of the population.” Of course, the army commanders tried to dissuade him from such a venture, because they understood the sinful implications before God. But David was too self-conceited to take in their observation and see what they tried to point out to him. The full implication of his action came to him only when they had carried out the command. “But afterwards, David’s heart misgave him for having taken a census of the people. ‘I have committed a grave sin,’ David said to the Lord. ‘But now, Lord, I beg you to forgive your servant for this fault. I have been very foolish.’” God forgave his sin as usual, but the punishment meted out to him and the people gives us an idea of the gravity of the offence.

The focus on self and self-possession is the contrary of humility. It makes us lose sight of God’s presence among us and demean the worth of our neighbour, who has not as much as we think we have. The awareness of self and possession caused the youth who was invited by Jesus Christ to come follow him after selling all he owned to decline the invitation. In the Gospel, the self-awareness of the people in Christ’s hometown prevented them from listening to his proclamation of the Gospel to them. “Jesus went to his hometown, and his disciples accompanied him. With the coming of the sabbath he began teaching in the synagogue, and most of them were astonished when they heard him. They said, ‘Where did the man get all this? what is this wisdom that has been granted him, and these miracles that are worked through him? This is the carpenter, surely, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joset and Jude and Simon? His sisters, too, are they not here with us? And they would not accept him.” They witnessed his miracles and the authority of his words but refused to believe because they considered themselves superior to his common state. Their focus on themselves and status prevented them from seeing the divine presence in Jesus Christ, demonstrated by his words and actions. We must seek the grace of God to enable us to empty ourselves of self, to admit God within us in humility. “O happy the man to whom the Lord imputes no guilt, in whose spirit is no guile.”

Let us pray: Grant us, Lord our God, that we may honour you with our minds in deep humility, and love everyone in meekness of heart as our Saviour did. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.  

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