Tuesday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time

 Lectionary: 486

Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus...

As far as I can tell we hear this amazing song from Philippians only a few times each year: on Good Friday, the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, and (every other year) on this Tuesday, late in the liturgical cycle. 

And yet it is so important to our knowledge of Jesus and our calling as disciples of Jesus. We should have "the same attitude" which is humble in God's sight and before all people. 

Catholic theologians like Hans Ur von Balthazar find that the Lord's humility not only models our ideal behavior, it also reflects the life of the Holy Trinity. Just as Jesus obeys the Father in every way, so does the Father empty himself in total love for the Son. He has handed over to Jesus everything in heaven and on earth. The Holy Spirit likewise seems to disappear between the Father and the Son in their love for one another, and yet the Holy Spirit is their love. 

This doctrine of kenosis, the Greek word for emptying, reappeared in our preaching and teaching when Christian theologians disengaged themselves from the pointless feuding of "Protestant vs Catholic" and noticed what was happening elsewhere. Nations had become obsessed with power as they amassed globe-spanning empires and developed weapons to annihilate millions of human beings. Their doctrine of unlimited growth saps resources and starves nations. Their doctrine of "total war" include the killing of noncombatants, livestock, and natural resources along with the destruction of industries, hospitals, schools, markets, and homes. 

The all-powerful God of Christian worship has been eclipsed by the machinery of business and war. Only the corpse of a crucified man remains in silent testimony to the futility of power. They cannot see his resurrected body but they know it threatens their beliefs, practices. and hegemony.

Because of his complete surrender to the will of God, even to the point of dying on a cross. 

...God greatly exalted him

and bestowed on him the name

that 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.

Our faith must reflect Jesus's disavow of power, privilege, and security. If he would not call a dozen legions of angels to shield him from the mob in Gethsemane, we have little excuse for amassing weapons of mass destruction against our fellow earthlings, especially when a total war might destroy all human life on earth. Because we have heard the Lord's command to "Be not afraid" we cannot adopt the warlike attitude of frightened people. 

The faithful have not forgotten; we remember daily the One who would not do evil to do good, who saves us from the insult of sin and death by his own humiliation.