Unseen Acts Define Us

Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Over these last two days, we have been giving a retreat

using the The Book of Joy, authored by

the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

They discuss four pillars of the mind

and four pillars of the heart as pillars

to work your way to joy.

One of the foundational pillars they mention is humility.

This echoes what we have heard time and time again

from our saints in the Catholic Church.

It is the foundational virtue of the Christian life.

Most every saint in the Catholic tradition pointed to

humility as the foundational virtue in their lives;

humble before God, humble before others.

That they recognize who they are in God's eyes,

that they are sinners asking for mercy.

Echoing those very same words,

when Pope Francis was first elected, you might remember,

one of the very first interviews he ever conducted,

was from an Italian journalist.

The journalist asked, "Who is Cardinal Bergoglio?

Who is Pope Francis?"

The pope bowed his head and said,

"I am a sinner."

It was really humbling to hear the pope

remind himself that he is a sinner.

As he had been exalted to the highest office in the church,

he brings himself back down to the ground.

I cannot help but think that gives us a model

of how we are called to be in our lives.

That we do not exalt ourselves,

as the scripture says today, but we humble ourselves.

One of the best lines that comes out of this book on joy,

is a line that is actually a quote from a Catholic saint,

and I do not remember which saint it is now, but they say,

"Humility is not thinking less of yourself,

but thinking of yourself less."

Some of the hardest people to be around

are people who are always talking about themselves.

Not necessarily those who are always talking,

but those who are always talking about themselves.

Because it is very hard to take,

because you just hear them rattle one thing or another.

Like how great they are at this and what they do here.

You just go, "Ugh."

They are exalting themselves.

In the middle of our week of celebration of

70 years as a parish and almost 65 as a school,

we have been focusing on different things each day.

On Wednesday, we started out the week with a school Mass

and it was a wonderful Mass with all the schoolchildren here.

We are reminded that for these 70 years

and 65 years that we have built on the past.

There are people who have done things here

that we will never, ever see, and

we recognize that we stand on their shoulders

because of what they have done. 

Unseen things.

The sisters who were here at the founding of the school are long gone

and they are just a shadow in the past.

And yet, the school is the result of their sacrifices,

their giving of themselves.

Hidden little things that they did

that make the school what it is today.

The same with the founding mothers and fathers

of this parish who founded this parish

with the priests and religious and staff

who worked here for this many years,

they sacrificed for so much.

So we have a certain responsibility

and we should be humble enough to recognize

that everything that we have here is not our making.

We did not do this.

There are some of you who were here

when this was underway.

The church used to be this way, now it is this way.

That was done by another generation and the school upkeep.

We had an alumni night on Thursday night,

and one common thread heard,  

"The school looks so fantastic. It is wonderful.

It is just wonderful to see it all look so beautiful.

They have really taken care of our school.

What a gift to recognize that

they have taken care of our school so well.”

We now have a certain responsibility to build on this

and to also sacrifice and to build and to give.

Other generations will never know

who our faces are and who we are.

And that should not bother us,

because we have received from other generations,

now we want to pass it on.

That sense of humility needs to pervade

what we are going to do in the days ahead.

But for today, the Lord calls us to be humble before the Lord.

One way I suggested to the kids,

and I think it is worth repeating today to all of you is this.   

A couple of years ago when I was pastor at the previous parish,

my young niece was a student in the school.

While she was a young child,

I caught her doing something really good.

She did not see me seeing her,

but she was doing what she was known to do;

she was caring for another student.

She was kind and she was gentle

and it made me so proud that

my little niece was doing the right thing.

When I went later and I told my brother,

he rightly beamed with pride, as you can imagine.

“My little girl, my eldest did the right thing at the right time.”

We both recalled a phrase from our mother,  

"What defines you most is what you do when nobody is looking."

That is so true.

What we are going to do in the next seventy years,

or maybe for us maybe it is the next 20,

depends how old we are?

But whatever we are going to do in the future

maybe no one is going to see it except us.

We are called to do all those unseen things with humility,

with kindness, with gentleness.

That is what we want to be defined as because

that is what the Lord wants us to be defined as,

to be kind and gentle and humble souls.

My challenge to you for this week,

is there something that you can do,

one thing that you can do when

no one else will necessarily see?

You are not doing it to be seen,

but you are going to  do something

that requires of you a sacrifice,

something that you have to do that is kind and gentle.

Maybe it is calling that one neighbor,

the only one who is going to see is that neighbor.

Maybe it is reaching out to a homeless person

and no one else will see it except that one homeless person.

Maybe it is just stopping to acknowledge them

and to ask them their name and if there is something

that you can do for them.

Maybe it is saying a prayer for someone

who will know you prayed for them.

Maybe it is picking up that piece of trash that is not yours.

Maybe it is recycling the right way when nobody will see you.

Is there something that you can do that requires of you

a little bit of stretch, something that stretches you?

Because we are called to push ourselves just a little bit

and to humble ourselves for the sake of the Gospel.

So my prayer is that we try to be humbled together.

My prayer is that we try to be humble together

and that we recognize we are not creators

but that we are co-creators with God,

we are creatures who co-create with God.

And what we can co-create together is a kinder world,

a gentler community, one that is full of compassion

that welcomes in the broken and the wounded.

So today, for our part, can we do some, one thing

that may be unseen by others

but that will define us to be a humble servant of the Lord.

One action that we all know that

when we come next week that is what we did this week.

Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.