The Eucharist is the most central activity of Catholic life. The importance, the value, the significance of the Eucharist can never be adequately described. Whatever praise and gratitude we direct to the Eucharist can only fall short, because the Eucharist is God Himself present among us, and loving us. Love is the gift of oneself, and here we have God giving Himself perfectly and entirely. Of all the libraries full of books that have been written about the Eucharist, I’ll just grab one aspect to focus on, and consider briefly the humility of God.
I don’t know about you, but that phrase sounds a little odd to me: “the humility of God.” Which probably shows how far I have to go in Christian life. Humility is a virtue we praise in others when it pleases us, but that doesn’t mean we don’t underestimate it by a couple million miles.
What’s humility? Let’s start with what it isn’t. It isn’t false modesty; it isn’t false anything. It isn’t putting yourself down or hiding your gifts. Humility isn’t refusing to strive for excellence, or lack of ambition. It isn’t pretending to be unimportant when God thought you were important enough to create and redeem with His own blood. It’s never false or pretending because humility is about truth: the truth about who we are, and who we are before God, and who we are before each other.
We fail humility when we pretend to be better than others. Now, if I asked you all if you think you’re better than other people, everybody in here would say ‘no.’ But I think if we give it a little more thought, more humble thought, maybe we’d all have to admit that sometimes we do. Pick the right person, or a person who did a certain sort of thing, and that feeling of contempt rises up. Humility requires us to admit that we aren’t always humble.
We fail humility just as much when we pretend to be less than others. Have you ever seen someone who insisted on going after everyone else, who insisted on claiming the lowest place, who did it in such a way that it was really just another form of pride? One of the ways of puffing yourself up is to make a big show of being humble.
Is God humble? You bet. God is the source and perfection of humility. Just look at the Eucharist. God comes to us in the most ordinary, unassuming, accessible way. He allows us to draw so close. He makes himself so… plain. We, who are made from dust, come to church with our puffed-up ideas about ourselves, only to find here a God, who made everything with a Word of his mouth, coming to us in this astonishingly humble way!
We want our whole lives to be Eucharistic, and part of that is imitating this humility. God is here among us in, in one way of looking at it, in the lowest place. There’s nothing at all showy about the Eucharist. Imagine a visitor who knew nothing of our religion, and saw us all genuflecting to that brass box over there, and centering our whole liturgy around it. When they opened the box, think how surprised and confused they would be. Huh? A bunch of little pieces of bread? Of course we know it’s more than that. But it doesn’t appear to be more than that. Nothing could be more ordinary. Nothing could be less intimidating.
And that’s how our God chooses to come among us. Can we imitate that? Can we learn to offer ourselves to others so blithely and unassumingly? Can we accept the risk of being tragically and grievously under appreciated, and even when we are under appreciated, keep on offering ourselves just the same? That’s a godlike thing.
Humility will give others what they need just because they need it, regardless of glamor or gratitude.
Humility is great enough to make itself small.
Humility is willing to offer what it has, and doesn’t mind if no one’s impressed.
Humility is the key to communion. Prideful, puffed-up people can never come together, not really. The most they can have is a partnership of egoisms, which lasts as long as it serves both of their interests. Only with humility can people come together, understand each other, offer themselves to each other with honesty and simplicity of heart. The moment you focus on yourself, and puffing yourself up, real communion becomes impossible.
That’s why we also call the Eucharist “Communion.” It’s our communion with God, and it’s our communion with each other in the Body of Christ. Look how completely God has humbled Himself, how far He’s come to be with us, how unassuming He is willing to be. The more we can imitate the humility at the heart of the Eucharist, the closer we will be to God, and the closer we will be as the Body of Christ.
We need the same humility we find in the Eucharist, that says, “I offer what you need because you need it. I offer you not only what I have, not only what I can do, but me, myself. If you don’t want this gift, the offer stands if you ever do. If you aren’t grateful, the offer stands then too.”
If the maker of Heaven and Earth surrounded by choirs of worshipping angels can come to us in such complete humility, maybe we can find a little for each other.
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