Inflated egos

In his book The Holy Longing, Ronald Rolheiser writes that there is within us a fundamental disease, an unquenchable fire that renders us incapable, in this life, of even coming to full peace.

This desire, he continues, lies at the centre of our lives. It can show itself as aching pain or delicious hope. Spirituality is, ultimately, about what we do with that desire.

And today's readings indicate the way for us. Having Jesus so often at table is part of Luke's presentation of Jesus as a philosopher as well as a prophet. Luke in today's Gospel tells us also that the guests had Jesus under close scrutiny.

Which connotes hostility. Even at the time of Jesus, talk about humility was very discordant. At face value, Jesus's table talk seems to fit within the common sense wisdom on etiquette.

Jesus began speaking about places at table because he saw their practice of always seeking the first places. But Jesus here is not just giving a bit of advice. He is not merely teaching tactics to be respected and honoured.

There is a subversive and indeed parabolic character in Jesus's words which in the context of the Gospel as a whole take on a much more powerful significance. When Jesus is saying: all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all those who humble themselves will be exalted, it is not just common sense wisdom that Jesus is passing on.

It's the fundamental theme of divine reversal. Jesus parodies the good advice of worldly wisdom only to subvert it by the more radical demand of the kingdom. Jesus challenges the conventional patterns of reciprocity that inspire and characterise most of our behaviour and proposes instead the measure of the kingdom.

It's a bit of good news we need so much to hear again and again. We're all becoming part of a culture where the costings of whatever we do always come first. It is called the do ut des mentality.

I give only when I've already made my calculations. It's always a calculated risk that we take. In the context of this perennial temptation to calculate the turnover first of whatever we do and give, Jesus would come across as a dreamer, a head-in-air prophet who has no idea what the world is and what relationships are for.

Competitiveness is today the password for success, be it about football or entering a Church school. Politicians speak all the time of making the country competitive. But that is also what we all transmit to children from their early years of life.

It's the philosophy that dominates our heart and mind today: seek first your own interest and your own good. It's a society where self-promotion is the stairway to success. With the result that, when we look around, we find ourselves living in a community of inflated egos.

We read today in the second reading from Hebrews that it's the city of God which sets the right perspective to our daily living. Already the Book of Ecclesiasticus, in the first reading, acknowledges on a purely rational and human level that "there is no cure for the proud man's malady".

Indeed, as C.S. Lewis writes, "there is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others."

He is writing of pride, which is the greatest sin because it puts self before God. It makes you love yourself with all your heart and soul and mind and strength rather than God. Desire is always stronger than satisfaction. So desire can end up being a disease. That is what Jesus is trying hard to cure us of.