The 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 27, 2020

Philippians 2:1–11

If there is any encouragement in Christ, any solace in love, any participation in the Spirit, any compassion and mercy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, with the same love, united in heart, thinking one thing. Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but also for those of others. Have in you the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. 

In teaching basic Christian morality to pagan converts, St. Paul always pointed to the example of Christ.  We see him do this in his letters to the Ephesians (in chapters five and six) and to the Colossians (in chapters three and four).  In the second reading for today’s Mass, St. Paul first speaks of the need for generosity and unity for pleasing Christ, and then, with the words, “Have in you the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus”, he tells them how they might live in Christ.  This “attitude” is one of obedience even unto death, and the most savage kind of death.  In the Christian this might take the form of martyrdom, but it always means holding all things — all things — as nothing, for the sake of Christ.

Paul considered the absolute obedience of the Lord Jesus to be his most important characteristic.  It is what makes the Son of God who he is.  The Son is equal in power and glory to the Father but his obedience makes him distinct from the Father.  In his subjection to the Father the Son makes himself subject to us as well, and dies on the Cross because of the Father’s love for us and his desire for us to be saved: that is, the Son loves us because the Father, whom he loves, loves us.  We can imitate the Son in this and in doing so, we can live out the life he commands us to live.  His first commandment is to love God with all our heart and soul.  We see the Lord adoring the Father with his prayers and by fulfilling the Father’s will.  Seeing this, and with the help of grace, we may also adore him with our prayers and by fulfilling his will for us.  The second commandment the Lord Jesus gives us is to love our neighbors as ourselves.  Now, very many people make themselves unlovable and even despicable to us, and yet we can love them, that is, have a will for their conversion, knowing that the Lord Jesus himself loves them.  We love the ones he loves for his sake.  We often do this in small ways in our daily life: our spouse or parent or sibling has a friend or relative that we find simply odious, and yet for the sake of the person we love, we are civil to that odious person.  As Christians, we pray for the conversion of people who openly offend God and scandalize or even persecute the faithful.  We do this for the sake of Christ who died for them, too, even if these people refuse to receive the graces he won for them.

Not long ago there was a kind of fad among Christian youth groups. The leaders of such groups taught kids to look at difficult moral situations and then to think, What would Jesus do?  This was their method of teaching practical Christian morality.  Problems arise with this strategy because there is not a human alive who can rightly envision how the Lord would act in a given situation.  Jesus’s actions on earth were inherently unpredictable.    He never did what people expected him to do.  What we can and ought to do, though, is to imitate his virtues.  Let us, then, imitate the Son’s obedience particularly so that we might share in the Son’s inheritance.