Melting pride

A recording of today's gospel and reflection can be found here.

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In today’s gospel (Luke 22: 24-30) we leap forward to a scene from the Last Supper in which Jesus hears the apostles arguing over who will be the greatest among them. His rebuke to them is instant, and He explains to them this Christian paradox: that the one who would be first must be last. Nevertheless, He outlines also the dignity of their own calling as apostles through which they will become the judges of the twelve tribes of Israel.

The great wound or burden that the apostles here show is similar to the fault that brought about the fall of our first parents: the sin of pride. Pride comes before a fall, according to the old saying. We might correct this and say: pride came before the fall. Yet the reason the pride was so disastrous is precisely because it overturns the fundamental relationship between ourselves and our Creator who is the source and foundation of all reality. Pride is in the will, of course, as is all sin, but in humans it involves an error in the mind and deviations in our sense of self and our social need for respect or esteem. In its most demonic manifestation, it is about a refusal of our creatureliness, our dependence upon almighty God, who holds us in being, and from whom all our gifts come. Arguably in its most human manifestation, it is the fruit of an unregulated neediness, the appetite to see in others their need for what we are, a kind of lust for significance, as if without it we would not be who we are. I am who I think others think I am, is how one psychological theory sums up the twisted logic on which pride and vainglory seem to live.

In this light perhaps we can appreciate now the power of Jesus’ command to the apostles: Let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. What is it that the youngest knows or desires, and what is it that the servant brings? How can we not find in such a precept an echo of Jesus’ other words: learn of me for I am meek and humble of heart? For, who is the ‘youngest’ in this case if not this little child, the Son of God? It is this child, the one who in time will be born to us, who knows the Father and in the same eternal moment knows the loving gaze of the Father upon Him. If then, like Him, we were to contemplate long enough the loving gaze that this Father casts upon those who have been made His children in baptism, would we not find it much more difficult to lust after the esteem of any other gaze? Why would we, like the apostles, desire the stoney picnic of society’s approval if we had feasted on the loving kindness of our God who desires the world so much that He sent His only Son to redeem it?

It is perhaps this love also which drives the true servant to serve. For the eyes of the servant should not be upon the other guests but upon the Master of the House who has first looked upon them with love. Again, like the youngest child, this servant is firstly the One who came to serve His Father by serving us, His unworthy guests, the One whose sandal we are not fit to untie? And if Jesus tells us to take the place of the servant, He is essentially telling us once more: follow me. For where the Master is, there must the servant follow.

The pride and vainglory of the apostles today melts in the face of the example of Jesus’ humility, the Jesus who both gives them the words of eternal life, and bows to wash the feet of His Father’s guests. Yet standing behind this great example of humility in Jesus is the unquenchable love that pours forth from the Blessed Trinity, the love that Mary confessed in hr Magnificat, for Jesus serves us to please only His Father in heaven whose love the Song of Songs tells us of in these terms:

 

The voice of my beloved!

    Look, he comes,

leaping upon the mountains,

    bounding over the hills.

 My beloved is like a gazelle

    or a young stag.

Look, there he stands

    behind our wall,

gazing in at the windows,

    looking through the lattice.

 My beloved speaks and says to me:

“Arise, my love, my fair one,

    and come away;

 for now the winter is past,

    the rain is over and gone.

 The flowers appear on the earth;

    the time of singing has come,

and the voice of the turtledove

    is heard in our land.

 The fig tree puts forth its figs,

    and the vines are in blossom;

    they give forth fragrance.

Arise, my love, my fair one,

    and come away.

 (Song of Song 2: 8-13)

These are the words addressed to every pride-filled heart that gorges on a poison of overpriced esteem and misplaced desire and who remains unresponsive to divine love received.

 

My love is love unknown, my Saviour’s love to me.

Love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be.

 

And with such a gaze of love upon us, how can we hunger for anything less?