Humility is the word I would pick if the overt tone of today’s readings had to be described.  Paul uses some strong language in the reading for today, no subtlety when addressing the shortcomings of the early Church.  The Gospel, on the other hand, approaches humility, not from a critical vantage, but, rather, from a grassroots point of view.  We can all imagine ourselves as the Roman centurion, afraid for the health of a servant (perhaps a friend in our case) but aware of our own status as weak and needful before God.  That is a hard pill to swallow, and I’m sure it was not easy for an official in a position of power to recognize his own dependence, especially in the presence of a man who had been a carpenter.  The truth is that love (faith) grips at all hearts and trembles all souls, making us all aware of how fragile we are as human beings.  We “proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes again,” (1 Cor 11:26b) in proclaiming God’s death we also proclaim the love God has for us. 

We laugh, we cry, we stumble and fall, and we hopefully do our best to stand back up.  Simply put: we live.  In living we quest for loving, and in loving, well, perhaps we stumble upon wondrous humility and faith, a faith ever-tempered by the storm and strife of life.