16th Sunday after Pentecost

Today is the 16th Sunday after Pentecost. It makes me think about the song of the 80's by Mac Davis: 'O Lord, it's hard to be humble'. He sings about being perfect in every way, among other things.

Well, he sure didn't have today's Gospel in mind when he wrote it. I know it was supposed to be funny, and it was, but so many people these days seem to be a legend in their own mind. This will be their downfall in the end.

St. Ambrose has the sermon this week, and it seems fitting even in our own time. He addresses himself to the Christian who has become a veteran in the spiritual combat, and tells him that concupiscence has snares without end, even for him! He may trip any day; he has gone too far, perhaps very far, on the road to the kingdom of God, bur, even so, he may go wrong, and be forever shut out from the marriage feast(of the King of Heaven), together with heretics, pagans, and Jews. Let him be one the watch, then, or he may become tainted with those sins, from which, hereto, thanks to God's grace, he has kept clear. Let him take heed, or he may become like the man mentioned in today's Gospel (from Luke), who had the dropsy; and dropsy, says our saintly preacher of Milan, is a morbid exuberance of humours, which stupefy the soul, and induce a total extinction of spiritual ardour. And yet, even if he were to have such a fall as that, let him not forget that the heavenly physician is ever ready to cure him. The saint, in this short homily, condenses the whole of St. Luke's 14th chapter, of which we have been reading but a portion; and he shows, a little farther on, that attachment to the goods of this life is opposed to the ardour which should carry us on the wings of the spirit, towards the heaven where lives and reigns our loved One.