"What is the Mark of a Humble Person?" 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Fr. Mike's Homily)

so i mentioned that this last few days this is like outreach season on campus and so uh it's like the last few days have been full of um those initial conversations so it's one of those things where every this might be actually i think what i mentioned the first mass of every single year school year is just how many times we have the same conversation over and over again it's like hi what's your name where are you from what's your major did you play any sports do you play any instruments what you basically basically it's

uh you we give each other our resumes and that's kind of like it's just it's been like the last few days have been constantly just like exchanging resumes um where you're just telling people which is fine i guess it makes sense right it's better than um it's a little less uncomfortable than hi what's your name so what are your biggest regrets in life like that would be maybe uncomfortable or what are you what what are you most deathly afraid of are there any fears you have going on what are your insecurities you have to start

somewhere and i think starting with a resume is not the worst thing in the world because because um it's a place to start and because it's true it's the things that are true about a human being we i think when you get to know someone it makes sense we start with the resume but then what happens is uh our time in college our time in life just all of our time essentially is spent building the resume and so we go back to this thing of like how we introduce ourselves we lead with a resume but

then it turns out that we end up living for the resume so what are the accomplishments what are the achievements what are the things that i can say after my name that are the things that i've done the things that um i've lived for the things that i've earned and i think that's not bad but how sad would it be like how tragic would it be if that was all you were remembered for like what's on the resume i was kind of i was going through this i was kind of like looking up like what

would elon musk's resume be like okay he founded spacex and there was like 30 things that aren't on his resume that was on some website and then eddie you know he got had an roi of a company for 130 billion he that he would if he died today he would die you know this this amount of money wealthy and i thought that's just again how empty it would be if at someone's funeral at the elon musk's funeral they just stood up and they said these are all the things that he did these are all his

achievements these are all his accomplishments this is how much he was worth when he died it's kind of like uh if you got someone's funeral and they said yeah um what i can say about him is his max back squat was such and such a weight or or yeah um what we know about her is you know she held her ideal weight till the very end um or that even at 65 he still looked 50. like these are things that we're living for right these are things that so many people are preoccupied with and how

empty would it be if that's the only thing that someone could say at our funeral i think is anyone right anyone can get up and read a resume at a funeral but only someone who really knows you can get up and give the eulogy not just like well what did she do what did what did he do but who was she not just what were what were their accomplishments but how were they like and it's crazy again because too many of us again we lead with the resume and we live for the resume but we're

left with the eulogy that's all we have in the end right and and there's that many david brooks he wrote a book called the road to character and he talks about this he talks about how so many of us we live for what they call resume virtues he calls resume virtues the things that we put on the resume but then we're remembered for our eulogy virtues and what we're going to do is actually today's we're starting a new series this this weekend we're starting a new series um because we want to begin with the end

in mind right because too many of us we lead with the resume virtues and we live for the resume resume virtues but we're left with the eulogy virtues and so if we begin with the end in mind the idea of like okay i'm starting the semester maybe i'm starting my whole career in college maybe wherever you're at in life right now okay i'm taking this next step and this next step is towards where like what's it aiming for because most of us again are living for the resume virtues but we're left with the eulogy virtues

and so we're starting this series in this series is on eulogy virtues it's why the things that we're left with the things that hopefully the people that we love the people that know us hopefully the things they remember about us hopefully at the end of our lives regardless how short or how long our lives are the things that are true about us and the first uh virtue that we want to talk about today is in the book of sirach actually jesus even mentions it in the gospel today in sirach he starts it off by saying

conduct your fears with humility so i want to talk about that one we want to focus on the eulogy virtue of humility today because i think there we have a lot a lot of us have a false view of humility we have the view of humility of like the person who's like oh shucks like they can't like receive a compliment without protesting they can't receive a gift without kind of like uh saying that they don't deserve this gift we sometimes c.s lewis talks about it like this he says sometimes we have it in our minds

that the humble man and the humble woman that involves this involves a beautiful woman trying to convince herself that she's not that beautiful or a intelligent man trying to convince himself that he's not that clever because that's what being humble is right we have that kind of image that's actually what he calls and what essentially we would call false humility but too many of us we fall into this view of false humility because we don't know what true humility looks like i would say this very very simply humility is nothing more than honesty humility is

nothing more than being willing to acknowledge the truth so being willing to acknowledge the truth about ourselves that yes there are some things that i'm bad at there are some things i'm good at the humble person will actually tell the truth the humble person is the honest person a humble person is willing to say uh yeah these are my victories these are my strengths and these are my weaknesses and these are my failures they don't have to tell everybody that but they at least have to acknowledge that for themselves because of that this is the

next thing the humble person is not merely honest the humble person is also grateful why because in every moment the honest person knows there's always someone to thank for every gift that comes into a pr in humble person's life the honest person's life the honest person knows that this gift didn't just come to me because i deserve it there's always someone to thank so here the humble person is honest the humble person is grateful and those things are great i think those are really big qualities but here's the thing the problem is this sirac says

this sirac says conduct your prayers with humility and you will be loved more than a giver of gifts and that got me thinking a lot about this and i thought wait okay so we yes we love honest people that's that's fine and we maybe you love people who are grateful that that's a good thing too but love more than a giver of gifts is i started thinking like wait so when was the last time that i liked the person who said thank you more than the person who actually gave the thing that they were thinking

for like never so he's dead so i thought he must be something more in the humble person more than just someone who's willing to be honest more than someone who's just willing to be grateful and i think there's another aspect to the humble person that we don't notice because it's so normal and c.s lewis says like this he says um don't imagine that if you met a really humble person that would be what most people call humble these days he will not be a sort of greasy smarmy person who's always telling you that of course

he's nobody probably all that you will think about him is that he seemed to be a cheerful intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him if you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily he will not be thinking about humility he will not be thinking about himself at all that line of like what's the mark of a humble person well they took a real interest in what you said think about this think about anyone you you walked

away from a conversation with a conversation with someone and you're like i like that person why probably it wasn't because they dazzled you with their stories probably wasn't because they entertained you probably because they just listened to you i don't know how many times i can say i i will walk away from a conversation and think i love her i love him and why if someone says because they laughed at all your jokes dummy like i'm like that is that's why great isn't this crazy we do this someone who's just willing to be interested in

us and just willing to listen to us ask questions and want to know us they took a real interest in us we love them that is the mark of a humble person how so they simply pay attention this is it the humble person is someone who has the ability to pay attention rick warren uh he's a pastor in california he took what c.s lewis had written and he put it in his own words he said listen we have to realize humility is not thinking less of yourself again it's not thinking um i'm nobody i'm some

poor schmuck when you're not humility is not thinking less of yourself it is thinking of yourself less the person who thinks of themself less is free to pay attention to whoever's in front of them that's like a superpower that is okay go back over the last well for us we are the mission team and every the focus team and everyone here over the last few days how many times we and our students on campus have been in conversations these new interactions with people these these people times where we're exchanging resumes with people how many times

those interactions those brief conversations or in-depth conversations were ruined because i kept thinking like how am i coming across how am i coming across how am i doing right now how am i doing that this interaction is ruined because i'm thinking what are they thinking about me right now that i i couldn't pay attention to the person in front of me because i was too distracted by the person inside of me they ever have that situation where right it's just i can't i don't have the ability to pay attention to you because i'm too preoccupied

with me but the humble person is not thinking less of themselves they're thinking of themself less that's why i think that if i just tell myself okay in this conversation just be humble just be humble okay listen to them just be humble doesn't work but how about this pay attention pay attention be interested in them that seems to work in fact this woman named tara brack tara said she said attention is the most basic form of love just giving someone your attention is the most basic form of love that there's there's no simpler form there's

no clearer form of actually caring for someone than simply giving their attention years ago i was talking with this couple and they were recounting one of the first big fights that they ever had as a as a as a couple um what happened was she came over to his house and he was he's a computer guy he's playing video games and uh she walks in he's like hey how are you doing great instead of having a conversation he's still playing his video game and she didn't mind that she and he said how was your day

she starts telling up telling him about her day and he said uh-huh he's interacting like he's playing video game but he's listening and at one point she's talking and he gets up from the video game and he goes into the kitchen to get something to eat and he goes into the kitchen and she stops talking and he realizes he was a pretty smart guy he realizes very quickly when she stopped talking when he went to the other room that something was wrong and so he said what's wrong and she didn't respond and so he sheepishly

walked out of the kitchen back in the living room and what's wrong and she said i was talking and you just walked away and he was like yeah but i was still listening to you and that began the first big fight of their relationship they recounted to me but there was a great conclusion that came out of this fight a great resolution that came out of this fight and it was this it was whenever we see each other after we haven't seen each other for a long time we've committed to each other that we're going

to have at least 15 minutes of what they called eyeball time where whatever you're doing when you get a chance put it down we're gonna have just 15 minutes of eyeball time just simply paying attention to each other i came across a post i don't know how long ago it was someone had said uh on my fifth year wedding anniversary i've concluded i've discovered that 80 of marriage is simply shouting what from the other room because that's this this recognition that even people who love each other so so much we don't often pay attention to

each other but sirach would say conduct affairs with humility and you'll be loved more than than a giver of gifts why because when someone does that when someone pays attention we remember them that's why humility is a eulogy virtue because it's what's remembered i think in the course of my life i've met at least two people who are likely to become canonized saints i mean a lot of holy people but i think these two people are likely to become canonized saints one of them is a is a man named father thomas dube father thomas dube

was embraced uh he was a teacher and an author he used to travel the world giving retreats and seminars and just teaching all over the place at one point when i was one year ordained a priest i was up in hibbing minnesota father dubai came to our parish and uh i'd read all of his books you know he's an old man by that point and uh he was preaching all day on a saturday and he asked me if i could drive him over to the rectory during lunch because he just wanted to rest his voice

getting an old guy and i said sure no problem so i drove him to the rectory and while he was eating i uh went up to my like my room and i had a nordic track you know ignored a little cross-country ski machine so i get on this for like half an hour and i company showered come down and he was like what was that i was like uh because i thought he was gonna this is the holy guy right this is the really impressive uh big time author teacher speaker whatever um i was like

oh he said was that a treadmill i think oh it's like a ski machine kind of a thing and he's like that's amazing you did that all on your own well yeah that was the only one up there he's like was that was did you go at least 10 minutes i was like well it was like a half an hour a half an hour wow and he just had all these questions he wanted to know about like what's it like and are you training for something and that's fascinating and i was just like i am

so he he he's not getting anything out of this conversation other than finding out about me and my exercise habits later on that night the pastor and the senior associate and i took him out to dinner sorry the pastor took the three of us out to dinner and uh he had written this book called the evidential power of beauty it is definitely 10 out of 10 would recommend um super good and one of the chapters of the evidential power of beauty is a chapter on music and how a music can be beautiful music can be

ugly too and so i just asked him a question about this chapter you know showing how how intelligent i was and uh his response i kind of challenged a little precocious i think i kind of challenged one of his points and he he listened and he said wow yeah well you know i got that from so-and-so that was someone else's someone else's idea that i brought into my book but what do you think about that and i thought i am an infant priest at this point i have i don't have a right to have an

opinion to anything i thought about this once because i read it once in your book you have given your entire life to this kind of thing and he actually was interested in what i had to say i've read almost every one of his books i've listened to almost every one of his published talks that's what i remember that this guy this man who had everything to teach me was interested in what i had to say that's why this paying attention this by humility is it's a resume virtue of course you could say well that's a

tactic he just didn't want to argue with you you got out of the argument it's or even just you know think about this if humility people are humble are loved more than giver of gifts givers of gifts well maybe then just be humble and you'd be charming if you're humble then you get your way if you're humble you can manipulate people maybe that's why you should be humble maybe that's why you should pay attention to people you can um make friends and influence people and that's how you can live jesus cuts through that in the

gospel in the parable jesus says some kind of confusing words in the parable jesus says you know when you throw a dinner when you host a party and host an event don't invite your relatives and friends now keep in mind when jesus has a parable it's not a general rule he's making a specific point so if you ever get the point where you have thanksgiving dinner you get to invite your family what jesus is saying is when you invite someone invite people who can't pay you back like when you do things for others make sure

you do them for people who can't pay you back when you pay attention pay attention to people who can't pay back you know it's the reason why we call it paying attention it's because it costs something it costs us something to pay attention and i think that when jesus is telling us you have to be humble you have to pay attention to people one of the things that he's saying is you have to pay attention to people who other people say don't matter just pay attention to the people who are right in front of you

because they're worth your attention so this is the last thing as we continue this series on eulogy virtues this week my invitation is is grow in the eulogy virtue of humility so simply humility is not thinking less of yourself it's thinking of yourself less it's having the freedom inside to not be distracted or preoccupied by me so that i can pay attention to the person in front of me so i would say this do this by simply paying attention to who well to the person who won't pay you back pay attention to the person who

can't pay you back i think start this week start by paying attention to the person who's simply in front of you when we meet new people we lead with the resume virtues and too many of us live for the res resume virtues but at the end of our lives we're left with what really matters at the end of our lives we're left with the eulogy virtues