“The greatest among you must be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted” (Mt 23:11-12).

We are now in the Holy Month of November and in our Scriptures today we are in the Holy Week in the Holy City of Jerusalem. Jesus and His Twelve Disciples have been on their final Passover journey after three years together. Now, Jesus criticized the Pharisees and scribes for many reasons, and one of those reasons was their wanting to be better than everybody else in public and receiving honor and praise.

The message of our readings today is very direct and simple. In fact, it is about as direct and simple as you will ever find in the Bible. As Bishop Olmsted once commented to me: “Common sense is not as common as it used to be.” Humility, similarly, is not as common a thing as it used to be, in my humble opinion. 23 years ago, I witnessed a great example of true humility. I was up in Scotland in late-December of 1999 for the Millennium celebrations. My sister and my niece joined me from Dublin and we traveled up by train, ferry and car to visit some very good friends who at the time lived in a 500-year-old Scottish castle at the foot of the Highlands.

On one of the days, we went skeet shooting. We were mostly beginners and we were split up into groups of men and boys; women and girls. The ladies’ team was led by a woman named Edith.

Now, my sister, Mary, is quite talkative. Edith, by contrast, is very quiet - and also a heavy smoker. So, as they were going from skeet station to station, my sister was attempting to engage Edith in conversation.

“So, Edith, I hear you’re very good at this skeet shooting thing?”

“Oh, aye,” replied Edith, taking a long drag on her cigarette.

“Well, I heard you were very good, in fact,” Mary delved and searched a little deeper.

“Oh, aye” replied Edith, while taking another pull on her cigarette.

“I hear you are champion of many places?” “Oh, aye” replied Edith, totally nonchalantly.

So, pretty exasperated by the lack of in-depth conversation, Mary broke down and finally asked Edith: “Well, what are you the champion of?”

“The world,” she answered, indifferently!

And, it was true: Edith Barnes was at that time the world women’s skeet-shooting champion - and, amazingly, as humble a person as you could ever imagine. No airs or graces, no fanfare or delusions of grandeur. Yet this World Champion was willing to give of her time to help teach a group of complete strangers and beginners to have some fun and to enjoy God’s creation.

And there is a lesson in this I think our Lord would agree. As He the Son of God was trying to tell us, Pride won’t get you into Heaven. Pride is, of course, the sin of the devil and it will most likely get you into Hell.

So, “conduct your affairs with humility, and you will be loved more than a giver of gifts,” as we read in Sirach 3:17 and also be “exalted” in the eyes of God, as Jesus tells us.

Fr. Kilian, Fr, Williams, our Deacons, our Parish Staff, Disciples and Volunteers

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