You can find homilettes for weekedays between October 28 and November 2 below.
Saturday, XXX Week of Ordinary Time, Memorial of St. Martin de Porres
(Luke 14:1.7-11)
Sometimes in reading the gospels we may think that Jesus develops strategies for satisfying egotistical desires. When he says, “turn the other cheek,” for example, one commentator opines that he gives the formula for embarrassing one’s opponent and reasserting one’s dignity. Today’s gospel offers a more obvious example. We might wonder whether Jesus advises us to take a back seat in a banquet hall so that the host will escort us to a place of honor. This instant return would be the “good news” that preachers of worldly payoffs propagate.
But we must rid ourselves of such delusions. Jesus is not a financial consultant. He preaches true humility as a way to follow him. He turns the other cheek when his guards beat him after his arrest. In his becoming human, he humbles himself utterly in that he does not cling to his throne of power. The rewards which he brings do not follow as premiums from a bullish stocks. No, they are accrued in heaven where we might enjoy them forever.
Few saints demonstrate Jesus’ humility like Martin de Porres. With a sense of unworthiness, which we should see as a comparison to Christ rather than to his contemporaries, he did not believe himself fit for religious life. Fortunately, the Dominicans of Lima, Peru, convinced him to live with them. From their monastery Martin untiringly taught the poor better farming techniques, cured their sicknesses with self-developed remedies, and fed the famished among them. As Jesus might have predicted, when Martin died, the bishops and nobility of Peru carried his body to the cemetery. More wonderfully still, angels carried him into Paradise!
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