Homily from Father Randy Koenigsknecht
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This Sunday’s Gospel (Luke 14:1, 7–14) reminds us that true greatness comes through humility and generosity. Jesus calls us to take the lowest place and to invite the poor and forgotten to our tables, trusting that our reward comes from God.
Father Randy:
So in my admittedly limited experience of priesthood, there is one virtue that I hear people talking about striving for kind of above all others. Do you guys have any guesses as to what that might be? Shout it out. Humility. Didn’t even need the hints I had prepared. Good work. But what I find most interesting about this is that, you know, maybe you can guess this as well. What virtue do you think people generally most misunderstand? Humility again. Humility again.
Father Randy:
So for most of us, humility kind of exists as one of these like far-off aspirational virtues. Like everyone wants to be humble, but we don’t know exactly what humility is, and we definitely don’t know how to get there. So for the most part, we know what a humble person looks like when we meet them, but then, you know, can you identify what actually makes them humble? Like what qualities they have that really are of humility?
Father Randy:
So none of this kind of really bodes well for us who are trying to be humble ourselves. If we don’t know really what we’re going for and we don’t know how to get there, it’s not going to work out well. So what is humility? Well, if we look at the root of the word, we see something interesting. The root word of humility means grounded. It means from the earth. It’s about being grounded in reality and the truth of who we are. We hear in the book of Genesis that it was out of the dust of the earth that God formed man.
Father Randy:
And you may recall that line that we hear every Ash Wednesday: “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” Humility means recognizing that we are dust. Remembering and living in that truth. That we’re not God. We were created by him. Every person shares the same origin. No matter who you’re talking to. On just like a metaphysical level, I’m not greater than anyone else. Because at the end of the day, I’m just like them. A creature formed from the dust of the earth.
Father Randy:
This can also reflect in our spiritual lives. We may be tempted to say, you know, at least I’m not as bad as this or as that person. I mean, look at what they’re doing. I’m not doing any of that. I must be doing pretty well. But humility instead recognizes that where they are, I once was. I once was lost, trapped in my sins, and that it’s only by the grace of God that I am here today, that I am where I am.
Father Randy:
And so this is part of what Jesus starts to get at in the Gospel today, where he goes to dine at the home of the leading Pharisees. Now notice that even though Jesus and the Pharisees, they have these great disagreements all around the Gospels — you know, ultimately ending in them trying to kill him — he still goes to dine with them. Jesus is normally found with the poor, with the needy, but no one is excluded from Jesus’ presence, not even the wealthy and the powerful. Right?
Father Randy:
And so now as Pharisees, these men would have been these upstanding members of society, keeping the Mosaic law, teaching the Scriptures. They’re in a prime position for pride, for placing themselves above those around them who aren’t being as devout, who aren’t as faithful. So it’s to them that Jesus addresses this teaching about taking the lower place and letting the host move you up to a more honorable place.
Father Randy:
The point, of course, is not taking the lower place because you want everyone to see you being moved up. That’s false humility. We know what that looks like. But taking that place because you want to be there, recognizing that on a certain level, you are no better than those around you at the lowest place. And this is why true humility can be very hard. How easy it is to look at the person on the street with all the poor decisions they’ve made and to hold ourselves above them.
Father Randy:
Much harder is it to look them in the eye and to see that every good thing we have is a gift from God, to recognize the grace at work in our lives. That put in their place, we could just as easily have made the same choices as they did. And so this is the first kind of grounding pole of humility. We all start from the same place, creatures in need of grace, in need of the mercy of God.
Father Randy:
But then if that’s the first pole of humility, the second is that God has lowered himself down to our level. He has raised us up. We are dust, but dust that has been directly shaped by the hand of God, formed in his image and likeness. We are so important to God that even when we rejected him, he became one of us. And doing so, he took the weight of our sins onto himself. He went to the cross and died for us so that just as he took on our life with all its suffering, with all the pain, we might take on his life and live with him for eternity forever.
Father Randy:
True humility is knowing that even at your lowest, even at the worst moment, God still wants you. That you are still worth dying for. Because God has made us in his image and likeness. He has gone so far as to die for us. We have a dignity that cannot be compromised. It demands respect. It requires love. So it can be easy to fall into thinking of humility as making us into doormats. That since we’re humble, we can’t speak up. We just have to accept mistreatment, whatever comes our way. But that is wrong.
Father Randy:
True humility means living grounded in that dignity, which means speaking up, pushing back. You cannot treat me this way because of who I am, because of what God has done. Humility is not just about knowing your weaknesses, but also about knowing your strengths, knowing your gifts. Sometimes humility will require you to be quiet. And other times it will mean speaking up.
Father Randy:
Being silent when you’re tempted to speak about things that are beyond you, things you don’t really know much about. You know, everyone likes to be the person in the room who kind of knows everything. And it’s really fun to start talking about stuff and people nod along and listen — until someone starts talking who actually knows what they’re saying. And then it gets awkward really fast for everyone. But then when we do know what we’re talking about, speaking up, that is also humility.
Father Randy:
Being true to your gifts, sharing, acting out of your strengths when the opportunity arises. Humility is not shrinking from greatness. Humility is the willingness to tell the truth and to live in that truth and live in it fully. I’m very good at certain things. I’m terrible at other things. You know, there’s a lot of things I’m good at, and I’m probably never going to be the best at any one of the things I do. But in some ways, we can see someone growing in humility when they can both receive a compliment and criticism equally well. Because they’re not threatened by either one. Because they know who they are. They know what their gifts are. They know what their weaknesses are. And they’re able to live in the freedom of who they’ve been made to be.
Father Randy:
So now that we hopefully have a little bit better idea of what humility is, what it looks like, what can we do to grow in it? And so to that, I have three very practical suggestions. The first and the easiest of these is gratitude. Gratitude recognizes that the gifts that I have are not really from me. Everything has been given to me by God. Practicing gratitude also means I am thankful for the gifts that other people have, those gifts that are different from my own, and even the ones that are greater than my own. As I said, I’m probably not the best at anything I do. There’s always going to be someone better. But the gifts that we have, they’re meant to be used in service of each other.
Father Randy:
So the reason that someone else has greater gifts than I do is so they can serve us. They can serve me. They build me up. They build us up. So gratitude helps us to see how reliant we are both on God and on other people. It helps us to celebrate and rejoice in God’s generosity to us and to them. It fosters humility just by keeping us grounded in the giver of the gift and not in ourselves, not in the gifts themselves.
Father Randy:
The second thing we can do is to simply pay attention. Pay attention to the person in front of you. Listening well, taking an interest in them. Asking follow-up questions in conversation. Take interest in their life. The simplest way that you can show someone that you love them, that you care about them, that they’re important, that you treat them with dignity, is by paying attention to them. Pay attention especially to the people that you don’t really want to acknowledge. Those who can’t give anything back to you.
Father Randy:
You may think of that person you see standing on the street corner, the one who you don’t want to look at because you don’t want to have that connection with them, and you want to just keep on going by. Maybe you think of that one coworker who somehow always manages to annoy you, just gets under your skin like a superpower they have. But do you know what God has done for them? Do you know how much God loves them? Humility is living grounded not just in the truth of who we are, but who they are, recognizing their dignity. So we treat them with that dignity, with that respect, by paying attention. It’s a great practice. It’s a great way to start.
Father Randy:
And my final suggestion is to find ways to serve the poor. Because that in itself is always an act of humility. Pride places us above those around us so that their needs can lay no claim to our hearts, that we can just leave them behind. But humility sees them, recognizes their dignity. Through service, we see that that person is just like us, sharing our humanity as our brother, as our sister.
Father Randy:
Let us practice humility. Let us live grounded in who we are — created by God, loved by him, one who is worth dying for. And let us treat others the same.
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Father Randy:
So in my admittedly limited experience of priesthood, there is one virtue that I hear people talking about striving for kind of above all others. Do you guys have any guesses as to what that might be? Shout it out. Humility. Didn’t even need the hints I had prepared. Good work. But what I find most interesting about this is that, you know, maybe you can guess this as well. What virtue do you think people generally most misunderstand? Humility again. Humility again.
Father Randy:
So for most of us, humility kind of exists as one of these like far-off aspirational virtues. Like everyone wants to be humble, but we don’t know exactly what humility is, and we definitely don’t know how to get there. So for the most part, we know what a humble person looks like when we meet them, but then, you know, can you identify what actually makes them humble? Like what qualities they have that really are of humility?
Father Randy:
So none of this kind of really bodes well for us who are trying to be humble ourselves. If we don’t know really what we’re going for and we don’t know how to get there, it’s not going to work out well. So what is humility? Well, if we look at the root of the word, we see something interesting. The root word of humility means grounded. It means from the earth. It’s about being grounded in reality and the truth of who we are. We hear in the book of Genesis that it was out of the dust of the earth that God formed man.
Father Randy:
And you may recall that line that we hear every Ash Wednesday: “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” Humility means recognizing that we are dust. Remembering and living in that truth. That we’re not God. We were created by him. Every person shares the same origin. No matter who you’re talking to. On just like a metaphysical level, I’m not greater than anyone else. Because at the end of the day, I’m just like them. A creature formed from the dust of the earth.
Father Randy:
This can also reflect in our spiritual lives. We may be tempted to say, you know, at least I’m not as bad as this or as that person. I mean, look at what they’re doing. I’m not doing any of that. I must be doing pretty well. But humility instead recognizes that where they are, I once was. I once was lost, trapped in my sins, and that it’s only by the grace of God that I am here today, that I am where I am.
Father Randy:
And so this is part of what Jesus starts to get at in the Gospel today, where he goes to dine at the home of the leading Pharisees. Now notice that even though Jesus and the Pharisees, they have these great disagreements all around the Gospels — you know, ultimately ending in them trying to kill him — he still goes to dine with them. Jesus is normally found with the poor, with the needy, but no one is excluded from Jesus’ presence, not even the wealthy and the powerful. Right?
Father Randy:
And so now as Pharisees, these men would have been these upstanding members of society, keeping the Mosaic law, teaching the Scriptures. They’re in a prime position for pride, for placing themselves above those around them who aren’t being as devout, who aren’t as faithful. So it’s to them that Jesus addresses this teaching about taking the lower place and letting the host move you up to a more honorable place.
Father Randy:
The point, of course, is not taking the lower place because you want everyone to see you being moved up. That’s false humility. We know what that looks like. But taking that place because you want to be there, recognizing that on a certain level, you are no better than those around you at the lowest place. And this is why true humility can be very hard. How easy it is to look at the person on the street with all the poor decisions they’ve made and to hold ourselves above them.
Father Randy:
Much harder is it to look them in the eye and to see that every good thing we have is a gift from God, to recognize the grace at work in our lives. That put in their place, we could just as easily have made the same choices as they did. And so this is the first kind of grounding pole of humility. We all start from the same place, creatures in need of grace, in need of the mercy of God.
Father Randy:
But then if that’s the first pole of humility, the second is that God has lowered himself down to our level. He has raised us up. We are dust, but dust that has been directly shaped by the hand of God, formed in his image and likeness. We are so important to God that even when we rejected him, he became one of us. And doing so, he took the weight of our sins onto himself. He went to the cross and died for us so that just as he took on our life with all its suffering, with all the pain, we might take on his life and live with him for eternity forever.
Father Randy:
True humility is knowing that even at your lowest, even at the worst moment, God still wants you. That you are still worth dying for. Because God has made us in his image and likeness. He has gone so far as to die for us. We have a dignity that cannot be compromised. It demands respect. It requires love. So it can be easy to fall into thinking of humility as making us into doormats. That since we’re humble, we can’t speak up. We just have to accept mistreatment, whatever comes our way. But that is wrong.
Father Randy:
True humility means living grounded in that dignity, which means speaking up, pushing back. You cannot treat me this way because of who I am, because of what God has done. Humility is not just about knowing your weaknesses, but also about knowing your strengths, knowing your gifts. Sometimes humility will require you to be quiet. And other times it will mean speaking up.
Father Randy:
Being silent when you’re tempted to speak about things that are beyond you, things you don’t really know much about. You know, everyone likes to be the person in the room who kind of knows everything. And it’s really fun to start talking about stuff and people nod along and listen — until someone starts talking who actually knows what they’re saying. And then it gets awkward really fast for everyone. But then when we do know what we’re talking about, speaking up, that is also humility.
Father Randy:
Being true to your gifts, sharing, acting out of your strengths when the opportunity arises. Humility is not shrinking from greatness. Humility is the willingness to tell the truth and to live in that truth and live in it fully. I’m very good at certain things. I’m terrible at other things. You know, there’s a lot of things I’m good at, and I’m probably never going to be the best at any one of the things I do. But in some ways, we can see someone growing in humility when they can both receive a compliment and criticism equally well. Because they’re not threatened by either one. Because they know who they are. They know what their gifts are. They know what their weaknesses are. And they’re able to live in the freedom of who they’ve been made to be.
Father Randy:
So now that we hopefully have a little bit better idea of what humility is, what it looks like, what can we do to grow in it? And so to that, I have three very practical suggestions. The first and the easiest of these is gratitude. Gratitude recognizes that the gifts that I have are not really from me. Everything has been given to me by God. Practicing gratitude also means I am thankful for the gifts that other people have, those gifts that are different from my own, and even the ones that are greater than my own. As I said, I’m probably not the best at anything I do. There’s always going to be someone better. But the gifts that we have, they’re meant to be used in service of each other.
Father Randy:
So the reason that someone else has greater gifts than I do is so they can serve us. They can serve me. They build me up. They build us up. So gratitude helps us to see how reliant we are both on God and on other people. It helps us to celebrate and rejoice in God’s generosity to us and to them. It fosters humility just by keeping us grounded in the giver of the gift and not in ourselves, not in the gifts themselves.
Father Randy:
The second thing we can do is to simply pay attention. Pay attention to the person in front of you. Listening well, taking an interest in them. Asking follow-up questions in conversation. Take interest in their life. The simplest way that you can show someone that you love them, that you care about them, that they’re important, that you treat them with dignity, is by paying attention to them. Pay attention especially to the people that you don’t really want to acknowledge. Those who can’t give anything back to you.
Father Randy:
You may think of that person you see standing on the street corner, the one who you don’t want to look at because you don’t want to have that connection with them, and you want to just keep on going by. Maybe you think of that one coworker who somehow always manages to annoy you, just gets under your skin like a superpower they have. But do you know what God has done for them? Do you know how much God loves them? Humility is living grounded not just in the truth of who we are, but who they are, recognizing their dignity. So we treat them with that dignity, with that respect, by paying attention. It’s a great practice. It’s a great way to start.
Father Randy:
And my final suggestion is to find ways to serve the poor. Because that in itself is always an act of humility. Pride places us above those around us so that their needs can lay no claim to our hearts, that we can just leave them behind. But humility sees them, recognizes their dignity. Through service, we see that that person is just like us, sharing our humanity as our brother, as our sister.
Father Randy:
Let us practice humility. Let us live grounded in who we are — created by God, loved by him, one who is worth dying for. And let us treat others the same.