31 — OUR PLACE

Presence of God. — O my God, that I may know You, that I may know myself! Know that You are He who is, and I am he who is not.

Meditation

1 — Among all creatures in which we love to delight and toward which our nature feels greatly drawn, our self undoubtedly holds first place. There is no person, however little endowed with gifts and qualities, who does not love his own excellence and does not seek in some way to make it shine before his own eyes and those of others. Indeed, for this purpose we are often spontaneously led to exaggerate our own worth and, consequently, to show demands and pretensions that make us haughty, arrogant, and even difficult in our relations with others. Humility is precisely the virtue that keeps within right limits the love of one’s own excellence; and while this drives us to place ourselves too high, that is, to occupy a place higher than is ours, humility is the virtue that makes us stay in our place. Humility is truth, because it tends to put our understanding in truth, making us recognize what in reality we are, and our life too, inclining us to take, before God and before men, the place that is ours and no other.

Humility makes you recognize that before God you are only a small creature of His, in all things dependent on Him both in your existence and in your acting. Having received life from God, you cannot exist even one instant independently of Him, but it is He who, as He created you with His creative action, so maintains you in life by His conserving action. Not only this, but you cannot perform the smallest act without God’s concurrence, somewhat as any machine, even the most perfect, cannot make the slightest movement unless set in motion by the artisan who made it. It is true that, unlike the machine, your acting is neither mechanical nor forced, but conscious and free; nevertheless you cannot even move a finger without the concurrence of the Divine Artisan.

Consequently, all you have in the order of being - qualities, gifts, capacities, etc. - and all you have achieved in the order of acting, nothing is yours, but everything, in one way or another, is God’s gift, is action accomplished with divine help. “What have you that you have not received? and if you received it, why do you glory as though you had not received it?” (I Cor. 4, 7).

2 — In the supernatural order, where everything depends on grace, Jesus’ word is verified in the strictest way: “Without Me you can do nothing” (Jn. 15, 5). Although baptismal sanctifying grace has raised us to the supernatural order, and infused virtues have made our faculties capable of producing supernatural acts, nevertheless, St. Paul warns, “no one can say: ‘Lord Jesus,’ except by the Holy Spirit” (I Cor. 12, 3).

Thus, to produce even the least supernatural act, you need God’s help; you need actual grace that goes before you with its action and accompanies you in action, up to its completion.

The great theologian who has studied Catholic doctrine in depth, in order to put into practice its least point, as for producing one single act of love of God, has absolute need, no less than the peasant who knows only his catechism, of the help of actual grace. Likewise, the saint, who has received many divine favors and lights, who has already reached heroism of virtues, cannot perform the smallest virtuous act without the help of actual grace. This tells you how great your dependence on God must be. You are therefore far from true humility when, trusting in your knowledge or in your long exercise of spiritual life, you believe your lights or virtues are sufficient for you to act as a good Christian. No, St. Paul admonishes you, “sufficientia nostra ex Deo est,” our sufficiency comes from God (II Cor. 3, 5). Without God you can neither think, nor say, nor will any good, “since it is God who works in us both to will and to act according to His good pleasure” (Phil. 2, 13).

Of your own, therefore, connatural to your limited nature and moreover wounded by original sin, you have only one thing: the capacity to fail in your duties, to fail, to sin. Take from yourself what is God’s and you will find that, by yourself, you are nothing, indeed less than nothing, because nothingness cannot offend God and you instead have this sad possibility.

Colloquy

“O almighty Father, God of truth, God of love, grant me to enter the cell of self-knowledge, recognizing that I by myself am not, but that all being and goodness in me comes solely from You. Show me my defects, so that I may know how to detest my malice and thus I shall flee self-love and find myself clothed with the garment of divine charity, which is necessary to be admitted to the wedding feast of eternal life” (St. Catherine of Siena).

“Grant, O my God, that I may learn to know myself thoroughly! And that I may truly be convinced that I am nothing and that You are all. And that I may consider myself nothing more than that nothing I am. And that I may never do anything for myself, but all for You. And that no creature may think more of me, nor speak more of me, nor do anything for me, nor give me anything more, but do all for You, give all to You. And that my nothingness may be reduced to nothing in the eyes of all Your creatures and in Your eyes, my God. And that You, the All, be all, in all and through all” (St. John Eudes).

Show me, O Lord, my nothingness, and show it in such a way that I not only understand it, but have practical, profound conviction of it. You know how difficult this is to my proud nature! If the intellect cannot resist the evidence of truth and must necessarily admit that I am nothing, have nothing and can do nothing without You, in practical life my self always seeks to attribute to itself, to arrogate to itself something and to delight in it as though it were its own. Help me, O Lord, to overthrow this pride, because, You see, it is thief of Your gifts; because, You see, it makes my life sterile, preventing me from receiving the abundance of Your graces.

O Lord, that I may recognize my nothingness, and the more I recognize it with simplicity and humility of heart, the more You will delight to be my All. You the all, and I the nothing; You He who is, and I he who is not! Therefore glorify Yourself in my nothingness! In this nothingness may Your love and Your grace triumph, but may Your mercy also triumph, because I am a nothingness that has sinned. Peccavi, Domine, miserere mei!