Of Self-Knowledge as the Root, and the Sole and Necessary Means to Attain Humility

i base us begin to dig and go down deep in what we are and in the knowledge of our miseries and weaknesses, that so we may discover this richest of treasures. St. Jerome says: “Go into this dunghill of your mean and abject condition, of your sins and miseries; there you shall find the precious pearls of humility.” Let us begin with our bodily condition; let that be the first blow of the pickax. “Keep these three things ever before your eyes,” says St. Bernard, “what you were, what you are, what you shall be. Keep ever before your eyes what you were before you were begotten, that is, matter foul and filthy beyond expression; what you are now, that is, a sack of ordure; what you shall be shortly, that is, food for worms.” We have a good deal here to meditate and dig into. Well may Pope Innocent cry out: “O base and vile condition of human nature! Look at the trees and herbs of the field, and you will find that they produce and bring forth of themselves flowers, leaves, and fruits of excellent quality, while man produces of himself vermin in thousands. The plants and trees produce of themselves oil, wine, and balsam, and yield of themselves a most sweet fragrance; while man brings forth of himself a thousand uncleannesses and an abominable stench, nauseous to think of, still more to mention. To sum up, such as is the tree, such is the fruit, since a bad tree cannot bring forth good fruit.”

Certainly it is with good reason and much propriety that the saints compare man’s body to a dunghill covered with snow, on the outside looking soft and fair, and within full of all manner of uncleanness and filth. The blessed St. Bernard says: “If you set yourself to consider what you bring out by the eyes, ears, mouth, and nostrils, and the other outlets of the body, there is no dunghill so filthy, or that brings forth of itself such things.” Oh, how well did holy Job say: “What is man but a little dust, and a breeding-ground of worms!” To rottenness [podre] I said, Thou art my father [padre]. The likeness that there is between podre and padre is much greater between us and rottenness. And to worms I said, Ye are my mother and my sisters (Job xvii. 14). What, then, have we to be proud of? Why is earth and ashes proud? (Ecclus. x.9). Of this origin at least we have nothing to be proud of, but plenty to humble us and hold us of little account. And so St. Gregory says: “The guardian of humility is the remembrance of our own filthiness.” It is well kept under cover of these ashes.

Let us pass on, and deliver another blow with the pickax. See what you were before God created you, and you will find that you were nothing and that you were quite unable to emerge from that darkness of nonentity; only God of His goodness and mercy drew you out of that profound abyss and placed you in the number of His creatures, giving you the true and real being that you possess. Thus, so far as rests with ourselves, we are nothing; so we ought to equate ourselves on our part to the things that are not, and attribute to God the advantage that we have over them. If any man thinketh himself to be something, whereas he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. So St. Paul says (Gal. vi. 3). Here is a great mine opened to us, whence to enrich ourselves with humility.

And even further on this point, even after we are created and have received being, we do not uphold ourselves of ourselves. It is not as when the workman has done his work with the house; he leaves it after he has built it, and it upholds itself without need of any workman to do that. It is not so with us; after we are created, we have as much need of God every moment of our life, not to lose the being that we have got, as we had, when we were nothing, to attain to being. He is ever sustaining and holding us up by His powerful hand, not to let us fall back into the deep pit of nothingness out of which He originally drew us. So David says: Thou, O Lord, hath made me and put thy hand over me (Psalm cxxxviii. 5). This hand of Thine, which Thou holdest over me, O Lord, keeps me afoot and preserves me from going back and returning to the nothingness in which I was before. We are always so tied to and dependent on this support of God that, if that failed us and He let us slip from His hand one single instant, in that same point of time we should swoon away and cease to be, as light vanishes from the earth when the sun is hidden. Therefore Holy Scripture says: All nations are before God as if they were not, and as nothingness and emptiness are they counted before Him (Isaias xl. 17). This is what we all keep saying at every step, that we are nothing; but I believe that we say it only with the lips without understanding what we say. Oh, if we did understand it and felt it as the prophet understood and felt it, when he said: I am, O Lord, as nothing before thee (Psalm xxxviii. 6). Truly I am nothing of myself; and the being that I have, T have it not but of Thee, O Lord: Thou gavest me it, and to Thee I have to attribute it, and I have nothing to glory in or be vain over on that score, because I had no hand in it. It is Thou that wert ever preserving this being and keeping it afoot, ever giving me the strength to act. All that being, all that power, all that strength to act, had to come to us of Thy hand, for we of our part have no power or strength for anything, since we are nothing. What, then, have we that we can possibly be proud of? Is it of our nothingness? Just now we were saying: What hast thou to be proud of, dust and ashes? Now we may say: What hast thou to be proud of, being nothing, which is something less than dust and ashes? What reason or what occasion has nothingness to deck itself out, and grow to pride, and take itself to be something? None, certainly.