Part one (6): Dignity, Necessity and Importance of Christian Humility

Xvi. Dignity, Necessity and Importance of Christian Humility

If you truly and fully intend to live in a Christian and holy manner, one of your foremost endeavors ought to be to gain a thorough and conscious mastery of Christian humility, which is the most necessary and important virtue. Our Lord most emphatically and insistently recommended it to us in these divine and lovable words of His, which you should, keep always in your minds and on your lips with love and respect for Him: "Learn of Me because I am meek, and humble of heart: and you shall find rest to your souls' (Matt. 11, 29). This is the virtue which St. Paul says is the most characteristic of Christ. It is the proper and specific virtue of Christians, without which it is impossible to be a true Christian. It is the foundation of all Christian life and sanctity, the guardian of every other grace and virtue. It is one which draws down upon our souls all blessings, for it is in humble souls that the most great and most humble Jesus takes His repose and His delight, according to His words: "To whom shall I have respect but to him that is poor and little... ?" (Isa. 66, 2).

This virtue, together with burning love, makes saints and great saints. For the true measure of sanctity is humility. Give me a truly humble person and I shall say that he is truly saintly; if that person is humble in great things, I shall pronounce him saintly in great things; and if he is very humble indeed, I shall avow that he is very saintly and adorned with all kinds of virtues. I shall say that God is greatly glorified in such a soul, wherein Jesus Christ dwells and finds in it His treasure and His paradise of delights. That soul will be very great and occupy a most exalted position in the Kingdom of God, since Eternal Truth has said: "He that shall humble himself shall be exalted" (Matt. 23, 12). On the other hand, a soul without humility is a soul without virtue; it is a hell of pride, the abode Of arrogant demons, an abyss of conceit and vice.

One may finally say that humility, in a sense, is the Mother of Jesus, because it was by humility that the Blessed Virgin Mary was made worthy to bear Him within herself. It is by this virtue, also, that you will be made worthy to form Him in your souls, and to make Him live and reign in Your hearts. So you ought, then, to love and seek this virtue with all your might. For this reason I shall devote somewhat more space to this subject than to the others.

XVII. Humility OF Mind

There are two kinds of humility, namely, humility of mind and humility of heart. When the two are united, they make up the perfection of Christian humility.

Humility of mind is a profound knowledge of what we really are in the sight of God. If we are to know ourselves well, we must see ourselves, not as we appear in the esteem and deceptive judgments of men, not in the vanity and presumption of our own opinion, but as we are in the eyes and in the judgment of God. To do this, we should view ourselves in the light and truth of God, through the medium of faith.

Now, if we consider ourselves in this heavenly light, with divine insight, we shall see that:

1. As men we are nothing but dust, corruption and nothingness. We are nothing and can do nothing of ourselves. Every creature has come forth from nothingness, therefore it is nothing, has nothing, and can do nothing of itself, without the sustaining power of its Creator.

2. As children of Adam we were born in original sin, enemies of God, subjects of the devil, powerless to do any good or avoid any evil by our Own virtue. We have no other way of being saved except to renounce Adam and our fallen heritage, to surrender our own mind and our own powers to Christ and enter into His spirit and His power. We shall also see how true it is that we cannot be free from the servitude of sin if He does not deliver us, that without Him we can do nothing and that, even when we' have done many things, we can and must say with truth that we are but useless servants. Add to that what St. Paul says: "We are not sufficient to think anything of Ourselves, as of ourselves: but our sufficiency is from God (11 Cor.

3, 5), and that we would be unable to pronounce the Holy Name of Jesus without the help of the Holy Ghost (1 Cor. 12, 3).

All this results not only from the nothingness of creatures, which are nothing, and can do nothing of themselves, but also from the subjection to sin, because we are born of Adam, who truly begot us in his own condemnation. He transmitted to us our nature and our life, but only under the domination and captivity of sin. He was not even able to beget us as free men, being, himself a slave, nor to give us the grace and friendship of God which he had lost. So that, by a most equitable judgment of God, we all bear this yoke of iniquity which Holy Scripture calls the kingdom of death; this yoke does not allow us to perform the works of true freedom and true life, which belong to the children of God, but only the works of death and captivity, works too degraded for God's grace, justice and sanctity. Oh, how great is our wretchedness and indignity, since it was necessary that the Son of God should purchase for us, by His blood, our very slightest thought of serving God or, indeed, the very permission to, present ourselves before Him! Yet this is not all.

If we look at ourselves in the light of God, we shall see that as children of Adam. and as sinners we do not deserve to exist, nor to walk on the earth, nor that God should think of us, nor even that He should take the trouble to exercise His justice upon us. job had, therefore., good reason to he surprised that God should deign to open His eyes to look at him, or be concerned enough to judge him: Et dignum ducis huiuscemodi aperire oculos tuos, et adducere eum tecum in judicium (Job 14, 3). He does us too great a favor, tolerating us in His presence, and allowing the earth to bear our weight, and but for a miracle on His part , all things would contribute to our ruin and perdition. We see, too, that sin deprives us of all our rights by withdrawing us from obedience to God. Consequently our being, our life, our bodies, our souls and all their faculties, no longer belong to us under the yoke of sin. The sun no longer owes us its light, nor the stars their shining guidance, nor the earth its support, nor fire its warmth, nor water its refreshment, nor the plants their fruits, nor the animals their services. But all creatures ought rather to wage war against us, and turn all their powers against us, when we turn

ours against God, so that they might thus avenge our insult against their Creator. The vengeance which the whole world will visit upon sinners at the end of time ought to be visited upon us every day, when we continue to commit fresh sins; and it would be most just, if God were to punish a single sin by stripping us of life and of all the temporal and spiritual graces which He has given us, letting fall upon us every kind of punishment.

We also see that of ourselves, in so far as we are sinners, we are all so many incarnate demons, Lucifers, antichrists, since everything in us is contrary to Christ. We carry about, within ourselves, a devil, a Lucifer, and an antichrist, which is our own will, pride and self love; and they, indeed, are worse than all the demons, than Lucifer and antichrist, for all the malice of the demons, Lucifer and anti christ i s derived from self-will, pride, and self-love. Of ourselves we are a hell full of horror, accursedness, sin and abomination. We have, within us, the principle, and seeds of all the sins of earth and hell, for the corruption left in us by original sin is the root and spring of every kind of sin, according to the words of David, the prophet king: "Behold I was conceived in iniquities; and in sins did my mother conceive me" (Ps. 50, 7). As a result of this, if God did not continually hold us up in the arms of His mercy, and if He did not work, as it were, a perpetual miracle to keep us from falling into, sin, we should plunge at every moment into a chasm of every kind of sin.

Finally, we see that we are so horrible and repulsive that, if we were able to see ourselves as God sees us, we would find the sight impossible to bear. And in this connection, it is said that a saint once asked God to give her full knowledge of herself. When God answered her prayer, she saw such a horrible sight that she cried out: "Lord, not so much! Otherwise I shall lose courage!" And that master of the spiritual life , Father Avila, says that he knew a person who made this same request of God and beheld himself to be so loathsome, that he began to cry out in a loud voice: "Lord, I adjure Thee by Thy mercy, take away this mirror out of my sight; I am no longer curious to see my image." After this, how can one have a high opinion of himself, or think that he is important or possesses any merit? How can anyone love

fame or seek to satisfy vanity, or enjoy the esteem or praise of men? Oh, how strange it is to see trivial and insignificant creatures like ourselves trying to be important and proud of themselves! Oh, how right i s the Holy Spirit in avowing to us in the Ecclesiasticus, that he detests and abhors a poor man who is proud (ECCli. 25, 3-4). If pride is unbearable no matter in what subject it may be found, what must it be in one upon whom poverty imposes an extreme humility? This is a vice common to all men who, no matter how great their worth may appear to be in the eyes of the world, bear upon themselves the marks of their infamy, namely, the quality of sinners, which ought to keep them in a state of great abjection before God and all creatures. Yet, what a terrible disaster is ours! Sin has made us so vile and infamous that we refuse to recognize our misery. This refusal renders us comparable to Satan who, by reason of the sin that holds sway over him, is the lowest of all creatures, but is so proud that he will not acknowledge his ignominy. That is what gives God such a horror of pride and vanity. As He knows our lowliness and worthlessness, it i s unbearable to Him to see so low and unworthy a thing trying to exalt itself, especially when He remembers that He, who is greatness itself, abased Himself even to nothingness. But even after His infinite example of humility, nothingness still wants to be exalted, and then, indeed, He finds this more than unendurable.

So, then, if you want to please God and serve Him perfectly, make a deep and thorough study of this divine science of self-knowledge. Firmly implant in your mind the truths I have just outlined and frequently consider them in God's presence; and each day ask Our Lord to root them deeply in your soul.

Take note, however, that although as a man, a child of Adam, and a sinner you are what I have just described, nevertheless as a child of God and a member of Christ, if you are in the state of grace, you bear within you a most noble and sublime life and you possess an infinitely rich and precious treasure. Notice also that, while humility of spirit ought to show you what you are of yourself and in Adam, yet it should not hide from you what you are in Christ and by His merits. Nor does it oblige you to ignore the graces God has given you through His Divine Son; otherwise it would be false humility.

44- Kingdom of Jesus

Rather, it obliges you to admit that all the good in you comes purely from God's mercy, without merit on your part. This, then, is what constitutes humility of spirit.

XVIII. Humilty OF HEART

It is not enough to have humility of mind, which shows you your wretchedness and unworthiness. Humility of mind without humility of heart is diabolical. After all, the devils, who have no humility of heart, possess humility Of spirit because they are well aware of their disgrace and accursedness. Hence you must learn from Jesus, the divine teacher, to be humble not only in mind but also in heart.

Humility of heart consists in loving your lowliness and abject state, in being content that you are little and abject and insignificant. When you are alone with yourself, you must love to treat yourself as insignificant and rejoice in being judged and belittled by others. Nor must you excuse Or justify yourself, except when there is a grave necessity. You should not complain of anybody, remembering that since you have in yourself the source of all evil, you deserve all kinds of condemnation and harsh treatment. You must love to be despised and humiliated and you should even seek opportunity of being reviled and belittled i n every way. There are two reasons for this:

1. Every kind of scorn and contempt is merely your due, and all creatures would be justified i n persecuting and trampling you under foot. In fact, you are not even important enough for them to take the trouble of doing so.

2. You ought to love what was loved by the Son of God, seeking to base your, whole life and find all your joy in the things He chose to give glory to His Father-namely, the contempt and humiliation with which His whole life was filled.

Furthermore, humility of heart is a matter not only of loving humiliations, but of hating and detesting all greatness and vanity, according to the maxim uttered by the sacred lips of the Son of God, which I beg you to consider well and deeply engrave upon your mind: "that which is high to men, is an abomination before God" (Luke 16, 15). I say all greatness, because it is not enough to despise temporal eminence and to abhor the vanity of human respect and

Christian Virtues 45

praise. You must also have an even greater horror of the vanity that may spring from spiritual things. You should fear and avoid everything that attracts attention and appears extraordinary in your exercises of Piety, such as visions, ecstasies, revelations, the gift of miracles and other such manifestations. You should not desire them nor ask God to give you these extraordinary graces. Even if a soul were to realize that God was offering one or another of these singular favors, it should draw back into the depths of its nothingness, considering itself far too unworthy, and implore Him to grant some other grace 'instead, something less striking, less conspicuous, something which would be more conformable with the hidden and despised life of Christ on earth. Since Our Lord takes pleasure in heaping upon you His graces, both ordinary and extraordinary, out of the excess of His goodness, He also derives extreme joy from seeing that you fly from all greatness in the eyes of men, out of a true sense of your unworthiness and the desire to resemble Him i n His humility. And whoever is not thus disposed will lay himself open to many deceptions and illusions of the spirit of vanity.

Notice, however, that I am here referring to extraordinary things, and not to acts that are common and usual to all true servants of God, such as frequent communion, or kneeling down at least once each night and morning to perform your duties to God, no matter where one may be; or accompanying the Blessed Sacrament when it is being taken to the sick; or mortifying our flesh with fasting, discipline and penance; or reciting the Rosary, or praying in a church, or at home, or serving and visiting the poor, or doing some other good work. Be on your guard lest, wishing to omit the practice of such acts under pretext of false humility, you actually give them up Out of real cowardice! If human respect and shame before the world stand in the way of your duty to God, they must be overcome. Remember that you are not to be ashamed, but to take great pride in being a Christian and acting as a Christian, and serving and glorifying God before men, in the face of the whole world.

But if fears, arising from vanity and the vain show of humility that 'is donned for the benefit of an audience, would seem to prevent you from doing what has been outlined, you must thrust those fears aside,

protesting before Our Lord that you want to do nothing except for His glory alone. Realize then, that all these works are so common to God's true servants, and should be so frequently practised by all Christians, that they offer no cause for vanity, being things done by many good persons.

I fully realize that our Lord Jesus Christ teaches you to fast, give alms and pray in secret. But the great St. Gregory asserts that this refers to the intention and not to the act itself. That is, Our Lord does not mean that you should not perform these or similar actions, in public, or before men, for He says, i n another place: "Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven" (Matt. 5, 16). But He wants your intention to be secret and hidden: that is, in the public acts that you perform, He desires you to have, in your heart, the intention of doing them not to please men or to win their empty applause, but to please God and gain His glory.

Finally, the true humility of heart that our Lord Jesus Christ wants you to learn from Him, which is perfect Christian humility, consists in being humble as Christ was on earth. That means, to be horrified by any spirit of notoriety or vanity, to love contempt and obscurity, to choose always, in all things, whatever is more cheapening and humiliating, and to be ready to be humbled even to the point to which Jesus Christ was humbled in His Incarnation, His life, His passion and His death.

In His Incarnation, as St. Paul says, "He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant" (Phil. 2 , 7). He willed to be born in a stable. He subjected Himself to the weakness and dependence of childhood, and in a thousand other ways He made Himself lowly. In His passion, He Himself says that He is a worm and no man, the opprobrium of men and the outcast of the people. He bore the anger and judgment of His Father, and so severe were they that they made Him sweat blood so plentifully, in the garden of Olives, that the ground was soaked with it. He gave Himself in subjection to the powers of darkness, that is, to the devils, who through the Jews, Pilate, Herod and their instruments, took possession of Him and made Him suffer every indignity in the world. Uncreated Wisdom was treated like a

vagabond by Herod and the soldiers. He was whipped and nailed to a Cross like a slave and a thief. God, who should be His infinite refuge, abandoned Him and regarded Him as if He alone had committed all the crimes in the world. And finally, to use the words of His Apostle, "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us" (Gal. 3, 13). Indeed, He even became the embodiment of sin through the power and justice of God. For St. Paul says: Deus eum pro nobis peccatum fecit--~'Him he bath made sin for us" (II Cor. 5, 21). In other words, He bore not only the confusion and abasement deserved by sinners, but also all the ignominy and infamies due to sin itself, and that is the vilest and most ignominious state to which God could ever reduce the greatest of His enemies. 0 God, what humiliation for a God, the Only Son of God, Sovereign Lord of the universe, to be brought down to such a level! 0 Lord Jesus, is it possible that Thou dost love man so much as to annihilate Thyself so completely for his love? 0 man, how is it possible for you still to retain any vanity, seeing how your God is brought so low for love of you? 0 my Saviour, let me be humiliated and destroyed with Thee, let me enter into the sentiments of Thy most profound humility , and let me be ready to bear all the shame and humiliation which are deserved by the sinner and even by sin itself!

1 It is in this, then, that perfect Christian humility consists; in being ready, not only to desire the treatment deserved by a sinner, but to bear all the ignominies and degradations which are the just due of sin itself, since our Head, Jesus, the Saint of saints, and Sanctity Itself, bore them, while you, at the same time, fully deserve them since of yourself you are nothing but sin and accursedness. If these truths were only deeply engraved upon your minds, you would find that you had very good reason to cry out and often say, with St. Gertrude: "Lord, one of the greatest miracles Thou dost accomplish in the world is-to allow the earth to bear me."