The First Sunday After the Epiphany (January 7, 2024)

“For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath deal to every man the measure of faith.”

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

“Know thyself.” This is a small but incredibly impactful instruction from the philosopher Plato. What Plato means by that is “know your own soul” or “know who you are.” As modern Americans, we spend a lot of time and energy trying to figure this out. Maybe you’ve taken a Myers-Briggs or Enneagram personality assessments. I’m a proud INTJ and Enneagram 3. Often, in high school, a guidance counselor might give a student whose not sure where they want to go to school or what they should study an assessment that will help them determine their vocation. When both Fr. David and I were going through the process of becoming priests, we both had to take psychological evaluations (and somehow, we both passed). See, the reason these personality tests are so interested and important is that if they can help us better understand how we’re wired, then we can understand what it means for us to flourish as we go with the grain of how God made us. The problem, however, is that sin keeps us not only from knowing God, but also ourselves. It alienates us from ourselves so that we end up like St. Paul in Romans 7 where ourselves become a mystery to us: I do the things I don’t want to do, and I don’t do the things I want to!

In the philosopher Aristotle’s book Nicomachean Ethics, he defines virtue as the habit of soul that is located in between two vices. There is, to every virtue, a vice of deprivation and a vice of excess. For example, we can all agree that bravery or fortitude is a virtue, the virtue of being willing to endure tough things for a loved object. We can see this in a soldier who is willing to go to war out of love for his family and community or a student who might be willing to stand up to a bully on behalf of their friend. So it’s a virtue. But the vice of deprivation is when someone lacks enough bravery to be considered brave; it’s someone who runs away, who can’t rise to the occasion. This vice of deprivation might be called cowardice. On the other hand, the vice of excess is when someone might be too brave; someone who foolishly rushes into every conflict without considering wisdom. This vice of excess might be called rashness. So the goal is to hit that perfect middle spot where we become brave in all the right ways while avoiding cowardice but also rashness.

Last week, I told you the story about how I had gone to confession and the priest stopped me because I was detailing each sin in a way that made me sound as bad as I could possibly be. And he told me that the God he represents is not judging me but is forgiving me. I was struggling with a vice of excess: scrupulosity (which is a risk with my particular personality type). The virtue would be honesty with one’s self in self-examination. This can be hard. St. James tells us of a man who looks in the glass, walks away, and then forgets what he looks like. That’s often how we feel during self-examination. It’s hard to get an accurate view of ourselves. So last week, we talked about the solution to the vice of excess in this regard, scrupulosity. This week, I want to talk about what I see as the vice of deprivation: laxity which is an easy way to give into the greater sin of pride. I think it’s true that, based on how we’re wired, we naturally gravitate towards one or the other; sometimes maybe different seasons of life have us oscillate between being too scrupulous or too lax with ourselves. Any good medicine cures an imbalance by helping us supply what is lacking. The same is true for spiritual maladies.

These feasts we’ve been celebrating, the Feast of Christmas and the Feast of the Epiphany are reminders of what God has done for us; the Sundays after the Epiphany remind us what our response in thanksgiving to God should be for all the things that he’s done for us in that precious Incarnation that brought about our salvation.

Our Epistle reading this morning is from Romans 12. Romans is a dense book theologically. I was once at a church growing up where the pastor took 5 years to preach through Romans. I won’t do that because I don’t believe in violating the Geneva Convention’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. But that does tell you how rich and deep the book is. Indeed, the first 8 chapters of the book, St. Paul delves into and explains the mystery of our salvation through Christ. In chapters 9-11, he explores the implications of our salvation in relation to the nation of Israel. And then, starting in chapter 12, his focus shifts to ethics: how should we then live in light of the great mystery of salvation? And the first thing he tells us is exactly the first thing we commit to doing in the Eucharistic canon: to present ourselves to God as living sacrifices and to keep ourselves from being transformed by the world. But then, interestingly, we get to verse 3, and Paul’s next instruction is that no one should “think of himself more highly than he ought to think.” Instead, we should “think soberly” or “think rightly.” That may initially sound like a trite instruction. How is this different from what all those personality tests do for us? The answer is that we have to be aware not just of how we’re wired, but also who we are in God’s economy to judge ourselves rightly.

All of us, at one point or another, feel the pull of pride. And the problem is that pride makes us unable to see things as they are. It inflates our own importance. The solution to pride is sober thinking of self, and according to St. Paul in Romans, this accurate form of self-assessment is a Christian grace gifted to us by the Holy Spirit. This means St. Paul is talking about something deeper than the Myers Briggs or the Enneagram or a vocation test. He’s saying that we have to remember what we’ve been saved from. Who were we without God? Even now that we’ve been baptized, we have to accurately see ourselves in the present: is the good that we do really as good as we often make it out to be? Are we accurately assessing the impact of our sin or do we downplay its gravity as a form of self-justification? In these ways, the more clearly we see ourselves, the more clearly we see our need for a savior. But in this sober thinking, this humble way of examining ourselves, we see a great model for holiness.

Who is the greatest saint to ever live? The answer is Mary. Why? She’s thought of highly, not because of her wealth, status, or power, but her humility: “For he hath regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden. For behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.” And what the mother does, the Son also does: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me;” Jesus instructs, “for I am meek and lowly in heart” (Matt 11:29). So what is humility/ It’s not simply letting others go first or go ahead of us. This can still be an occasion for pride: “Look at me standing in the back of the church potluck line. I’m the most humble person I know!” No, Humility is when our salvation befuddles and puzzles us; when we have to ask what does God want with a wretch like me? It’s the heart of the Prayer of Humble Access that we pray right before receiving the Holy Eucharist: “We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table.” Yet, he feeds us anyway because his property is always to have mercy. What a mystery. What great, unmerited favor. If we understand that that’s what we receive, how can we harbor pride in our hearts? How can we look at ourselves as anything other than a beggar who has found bread and is pointing out to other beggars where the good stuff is?

And so remember your baptism. Remember that this shapes who you are. You have been saved from sin, saved from destruction, saved from yourself. But also, this means that you are saved for holiness, a standard we all regularly fall short of. Also remember that in baptism, the recipient is passive: baptism happened to you; it wasn’t something you did. You’ve been saved, not by your own doing, but by the movement of the Holy Spirit through the sacraments of the Church. In addition to remembering your baptism, read the Scriptures. St. Gregory the Great says that Scripture is a mirror to the reader. It’s beautiful pages show us who we are. Spend time in the Word. And finally, it’s really good to sit with yourself in prayer doing the work of self-examination, asking the Holy Spirit to show you who you are. And remember, not matter how great the sin you might discover there is, God’s grace is always greater.