FOUNDATION OF HEAVENLY MYSTERIES

SATURDAY, TWENTY SECOND WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

1 Cor 4:6-15; Ps 145:17-21; Lk 6:1-5

Safeguarding the Divine Mysteries

As stewards entrusted with the divine mysteries, we are required to safeguard them against thieves and brigands, understand them, and pass them on intact to others. The most important task in safeguarding the heavenly mysteries we have received is carried out through the virtue of humility. This heavenly virtue is so important for the reception and safekeeping of heavenly blessings that the Church puts it forward as the principal virtue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. God adorned her with this virtue in a special way to enable her to play the unique role of the mother of Jesus Christ, who is God and blessed forever. Endowed with profound humility, she stood empty of anything that could hinder her reception of the Eternal Word of God, contained Him, and delivered Him safely for the whole humanity. Another reason for the greatness of this virtue in the Blessed Virgin Mary is that it fittingly opposes the devil’s pride and therefore stands for the enmity God put between the woman and the ancient serpent. Since the enmity is also between her Offspring and the offspring of the devil, the virtue of humility is found in its profundity in the Son of Man, and also forms the characteristic virtue of all her children, the members of Jesus Christ.

Based on the aforementioned importance of the virtue of humility and the fact that it is the seat of Eternal Wisdom, Saint Paul attacked the worldly wisdom he noticed among his converts in Corinth. Their display of self-importance smacked of the presence of the enemy of our salvation, not the presence of Christ. So, he used every argument to unmask the devil and bring them to repentance and humble confession of their sins. “It is not for you, so full of your own importance, to go taking sides for one man against another. In any case, brother, has anybody given you some special right? And if it was given, how can you boast as though it were not? Is it that you have everything you want—that you are rich already, in possession of your kingdom, with us left outside?” The whole rhetoric is supposed to move them, the ones puffed up with self-importance due to one spiritual gift or another, and all of us to true self-knowledge. None of us is anything without God; with our spiritual or natural endowments, without Christ we are nothing. If we truly understand that Jesus Christ is our heavenly blessing, which God has given to all, then we ought to humble ourselves before God, to receive the heavenly mysteries in Christ. To drive home his attack on pride, which masquerades as self-importance, Paul gives himself and other apostles as examples of endurance in humiliations. “We are treated as the offal of the world, still to this day, the scum of the earth. I am saying all this not just to make you ashamed but to bring you, as my dearest children, to your senses.”

Paul mentioned his and other apostles’ humility in the face of worldly persecutions and trials. They remain humble because of their deep penetration into the divine mysteries in Jesus Christ, who taught the lesson of this excellent and most important virtue on the cross of Calvary. Hence, for a Christian, humility is not just a recommended virtue, but a commandment we received from the Son of Man. He made it clear to the Pharisees, who questioned the disciples’ liberty to go against their religious practice, that the Son of Man is our rule of conduct. “And he said to them, ‘The Son of Man is master of the sabbath.’” We must be imbued with Christ’s profound humility to contain him as our treasure of heavenly blessings, as the Blessed Virgin Mary did. The virtue of humility makes us children of the Blessed Virgin Mary, members of Jesus Christ, as his brothers and sisters, and his mothers. This is what Paul meant when he wrote to the Corinthians and to us: “You might have thousands of guardians in Christ, but not more than one father and it was I who begot you in Christ Jesus by preaching the Good News.” We must endeavour to give an example of humility to those we preach to, as a foundation of the Gospel; for pride and self-importance characterise the offspring of the devil.

Let us pray: God of might, giver of every good gift, put into our hearts the love of your name, so that, by deepening our sense of reverence, you may nurture in us what is good and, by your watchful care, keep safe what you have nurtured. 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.