From the responsorial psalm: "O LORD, my heart is not proud, nor are my eyes haughty; I busy not myself with great things, nor with things too sublime for me. In you, O Lord, I have found my peace."

A reading from the holy Gospel according to Luke (Lk 14:12-14)

"When you hold a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment. Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous."

As a dinner guest of one of the leading Pharisees, Jesus speaks these words to his host. Although Luke doesn't say how he responds, we know that the criticism Jesus gives him gets at the heart of the reason the Pharisee held banquets for his guests. Does it look good in the eyes of the others? Does it impress the other guests at a banquet to see important guests. Does it inflate the ego of the host who delights in their awe? To participate in self-inflating reciprocity—to pay for honor and receive it in return for the sake of grandiosity—comes from deep dysfunction. Out of love for the people whose hearts he fashioned, Jesus tells them to stop. Instead, exit this game and open your home and your hearts to people who for whatever reason do not have the means of paying you back.

God, deepen my capacity to recognize the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. You put them daily in my field of view—those whose limitations may be physical but are more often mental or spiritual. In yesterday's Gospel, the words still echo in my mind: that you alone are the Lord and to love you with all my heart, with all my understanding, with all my strength, and to love my neighbor as myself. Help me, Lord, as I seek to love you and love my neighbor more completely. Yet, hearing the phrase "as myself" makes me realize that loving others does not mean you allow oneself to be a doormat. It means to live in the freedom of loving you through the inherent dignity as your child—a love we all carry inside us that seeks the well-being of others without compromising the common good. Saint Charles Borromeo, pray for us!

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.