Humility in the Cafeteria

By Jeffrey A. Beer Jr. –

Sometimes I don’t get the idea of humility.  But that is the topic  of the parable Jesus tells us in this week’s Gospel, from the 14th chapter of Luke.  Jesus tells a story about people putting themselves in seats of honor at the dinner table, and then getting “put in their place,” so to speak, and compares that to someone who is more modest, and is in turn honored by the people around him.  He ends this story by saying, “Everyone who exults himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exulted.”  I always found this a little strange.  To me, it felt like to be humble meant to put myself down, or attempt to seem meek or inadequate.

But the rest of this Sunday’s Gospel illustrates my own misunderstanding of humility.  After his parable, Jesus tells his host not to “invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment.  Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you.”   Jesus speaks here not only about authentic humility, but also about charity.

I think in a lot of ways, we can be like the people in the beginning of the Gospel.  Having places of honor at a dinner table might seem a bit archaic, but how often do we avoid a certain table in the cafeteria, or judge a friend group based on who they sit with at lunch?  How often do we embellish stories or tell stories that aren’t even our own in order to make ourselves look better or more important?  But to be humble means not to be desperate for the spot light. It means having enough confidence in who we are that we don’t need other people’s approval.  That’s right- humility takes confidence.

I always thought humility meant that I had to think of myself as inferior or weak.  But St. Thomas Aquinas once defined humility as “the rational pursuit of excellence.”  Humility is not meekness.  Rather, to be humble means to be confident enough in your accomplishments to portray them honestly, and let them speak for themselves.

To be humble also means that we have to be willing to admit our mistakes, and be ready to work on our weaknesses.  Humility does not mean we have to undervalue ourselves. But it does mean we have to see the value in others, their accomplishments, and their beliefs, even when they are different from ourselves.

Being humble does not mean we have to let ourselves be taken advantage of, but it does mean that we can’t take ourselves too seriously and we do have to be quick to forgive. For me, humility seemed a lot more obtainable when I started to understand that rather than making me beat myself up, humility called me to be honest, flexible, kind, forgiving and even easy going- traits that were much easier for me to see the value in.   So when I hear Jesus talk about acting humbly, as in this week’s Gospel, I understand that doing so leads me to other virtues, and the rational pursuit of excellence.

Humility is actually one facet of the virtue of temperance, or self control.  And sometimes acting humble simply takes self control.   I know for me, there are so many times when I want to voice my opinion at a meeting, act disrespectfully to an unfair teacher, get angry at someone who has hurt me, or talk up my accomplishments to someone I’m meeting for the first time.

I think we all have the inclination to behave this way.  It’s not easy to sit at the lunch table with that kid who really bugs us, but who we know needs a friend.  It’s not easy to let something go when a classmate or sibling has mistreated us. It’s not always easy to give the spot light over to someone else for a change.  But sometimes the key ingredient in humility is self control, and it is as easy as reminding ourselves that we have so much value in God’s eyes, that we don’t need everyone to like us or approve of us, and that it’s not always “all about me.”