Live for an audience of one - “If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are”

Today at Holy Mass we hear from St Luke in the Gospel….Jesus is in his hometown of Nazareth with the people who know him from his youth…He entered the temple and reads a passage from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah……”The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.”…..When he was finished speaking the people were impressed…St Luke tells us…”And all spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.”…This is the part that caught my eye as I read this text this morning…These are the same people who yelled “CRUCIFY HIM” down the road as Jesus's public ministry was completed…How fickle people can be….This is why we should live for an audience of one - God and God alone…This is easier said then done…Its natural to want to “belong”…..”To get invited to the barbecue”, as I like to say…That may or may not happen, the important thing is we stay faithful to God because when we stay faithful to God, we are faith to our true self……Mother Teresa spoke about this at the height of her fame…..She said this….”If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are. If you are blamed you will not be discouraged. If they call you a saint you will not put yourself on a pedestal.”…….So the questions for today to explore are…Do we know who we are?….How do we define ourself?…Do we let the world label us?….We must strive to live for an audience of one…And let the “chips fall where they fall”…Come what may!

“The Lord has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor and to proclaim liberty to captives”

Saints throughout the ages have written about humility…Humility is truth…What do I mean by that?…Its knowing exactly who you are…We are children of God…We are creature and God is creator.…No matter what “label” the world places upon you…Good or Bad…It does not matter…So how does one arrive at this state?…Mother Teresa spoke about that…She said to be humble means you have to know what it means to be humiliated…No one wants to be humiliated!….But to truly be humble, one must live it - I think that is what she meant…You can not read about humility and become humble…Its something you must feel…….Over the years of working with Mother Teresa's nuns I have observed very carefully how they live…..They get up early every day and wash their cloths by hand, whether in New York or India…They take bucket showers, all the sisters live in a common room, they own nothing…I can go on…What allows them to cling to Christ the way they do is partially because they do not cling to the things of this world…..When Mother Teresa was very old she was asked if she thought the religious order (The Missionaries of Charity) she founded would continue after her death…She said, if the sisters focus on two things the order would continue to thrive….If they first stayed focused on the Blessed Sacrament and second, if they continued to embrace living in poverty…..Living in the world as a married man, one can not embrace poverty in the same way consecrated religious do - And frankly God does not expect that for those who are married…However, we can choose to live simply, to raise our children on what they need as opposed to giving them always what they want…..Having many children aides this process because it forces a family to focus on the essentials……..”Things” have a way to distract us from God and before you know it, we are living for “things” and not for God…..Living like this is a formula to become truly free…..We must ask ourself continuously…What owns us?…Is it our reputation?…Is it our career?….Is it our social status?…If we say yes to any of those things - We are not free….We as Catholics must strive to be bound to one thing and one thing only God - From this prioritization, God on top, all “things” will fall into the right place, from our family, to the “things” we own, to our job, etc……I have noticed that there is a special bound between “working people”, the people that “get things done” day in and day out…Why?…Because these are the people who live and feel life and all its weight…They understand hardship because they understand joy…They understand want.....They understand human weakness…They understand what it means to be exhausted…..This is what binds them together - A lived experience…And this is why Jesus came to us in the form of a carpenter from a “working family”…Jesus himself felt all those things I just described…And if we live in that same condition, we will cling to God as opposed to cling to this world, which will in time pass away….Humility is truth…But to really be humble, one must “feel it”…Humility can’t be “faked” or learned from a book….When we live in that “state” as I just described, God becomes much clearer to our eyes, we can perceive him in our day to day life….”Things” get in the way……What defines you?…What owns you?…..If you find that something “owns” you…Be honest, and put it down….This is how we arrive at the place that Mother Teresa described…..”If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are. If you are blamed you will not be discouraged. If they call you a saint you will not put yourself on a pedestal.”

For whoever is begotten by God conquers the world. And the victory that conquers the world is our faith.

Today at Mass we heard how the crowd spoke very highly about Jesus, however Jesus did not let their words get into his head…He had something to do, and that something was the live and die for the salvation of mankind…..How does Jesus's example in the Gospel today apply to us?…..Well, we too have something to do…To live and die for an "audience of one" and that “audience” of one is God…..Easy to say, hard to do…..Why is that?…Because “things” get in the way…Those “things” blind us and pull us away from who we truly are…In a sense “those things” enslave us ….So again I ask the question - What owns you?…Be honest with yourself….And if something “owns” you, strive to put it down….This is how we are truly free...... Live for an audience of one - “If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are”