At that time: When Jesus went into the house of a certain prince of the Pharisees, on the Sabbath day, to eat bread, and they were watching him. And behold, there was a certain man before him that had the dropsy. And Jesus answering, spoke to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying: Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day? But they held their peace. But he, taking him, healed him, and sent him away. And answering them, he said: Which of you whose ass or his ox shall fall into a pit, and will not immediately draw him out on the Sabbath day? And they could not answer him to these things. {415} And he spoke a parable also to them that were invited, marking how they chose the first seats at the table, saying to them: When thou art invited to a wedding, sit not down in the highest place, lest perhaps one more honorable than thou be invited by him: and he who invited thee and him, come and say to thee: Give place to this man; and then thou begin with blushing to take the lowest place. But when thou art invited, go, sit down in the lowest place: that when he who invited thee cometh, he may say to thee: Friend, go up higher. Then shalt thou have glory before them that sit at table with thee. Because every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled: and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. ------------------- Sermon CXXVI. Christian Humility. _He that humbleth himself shall be exalted._ --Gospel of the Day. As we hear these familiar words, my brethren, some of us will perhaps be inclined to say, or at least to think, that this matter of humility is just a little threadbare, so to speak; that we have already heard pretty much all that can be said about it. I dare say this is true; but when a thing is very important it has to be spoken of quite often. And humility is very important; after the love of God and of our neighbor, there is nothing more so. In fact, the difficulties in the way of loving God and our neighbor as we should, come, we may say, entirely from our inordinate love of ourselves; and this inordinate love of ourselves generally takes the shape either of pride or sensuality. In other words, pride and sensuality are the two great causes of all our sins; what wonder, then, that our Lord should warn us so frequently about them? {416} And the very fact that we think we have heard enough about humility shows that we are not so humble as we ought to be. If we think that we are well up in this matter, it is a good sign that we are not. Many people will say, especially when they are on their knees, "Oh! I am a miserable sinner; I am everything that is bad"; but when they get up from their knees, and look around them, you will find that they think themselves in point of fact pretty nearly as good as anybody else, and perhaps, on the whole, rather better than most people whom they know.