Since I am going to be on vacation for the next two weekends, and I can’t really ask visiting priests to preach on our message series, I figured I would continue the message series, “Attitude Adjustment” these next two weeks in my bulletin column.

This series is looking at what is probably the foundational virtue for living the Christian life – humility. We have noted, humility is not a low opinion of yourself, it's a clear opinion of yourself. Humility is knowledge of you as you really are. The basis of humility is grounded in the reality that everything we have comes from God.

Last weekend, the deacons told us that the key to growing in humility is to listen. Humble people are listeners. We listen first and foremost to God himself because He knows more than we do. He knows more about us than we do. 

This week I want to reflect on a key obstacle to growing in humility. Today’s Gospel passage gets us started. People tell Jesus about a group of Galileans that Pilate had killed. We really do not know much about this incident, because there is no mention of it anywhere else. Perhaps they were telling Jesus because he was from Galilee, and thought he would be interested. Maybe they thought that it would provoke Jesus to speak out against the Romans (maybe start a revolt). But from Jesus’ response, it looks like they had another reason.

Jesus says, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way, they were greater sinners than all the others? By no means, but I tell you, if you do not repent, you will perish as they did.” Jesus was pointing out that they were making a comparison between those Galileans and themselves, thinking that they were better than them. It was a common belief back then that bad things happened to bad people, and good things happened to good people. So if something bad happened to Louise, but it did not happen to Fred, then Fred was a better person than Louise.

We still do the same thing today. We compare ourselves to others to see how we stand. The criteria for comparison might change – who has the bigger house, nicer car, better grades – but it is the same thing; we are trying to feel better about ourselves by standing over others.

The problem is comparing ourselves to other people is self-defeating behavior. It's a trap. It's a trap that we can't win it and it kills humility. Because if we succeed in the comparison, we feel pride. And if we fail in the comparison, we feel jealousy. Either way, we're a long way from humility.

But there is a kind of comparison that can help. It can help us grow in humility. We can actually leverage this comparison in our favor. When we start comparing ourselves to others, we need to remember how patient God has already been with us. He gives us time to turn to Him or to turn back to Him to repent, to change, to grow, and he does it over, and over, and over again. Lent is simply a reminder of that. 

So the only healthy comparison that we can make is the comparison we can make with ourselves. And that is an essential act of humility. Humility compares myself with who God created me to be. Humility acknowledges that the person God wants me to be, the person that is my very best self is a person that I still need to grow into.