33 — HUMILITY IN FALLS

Presence of God. — “I am poor and needy, O Lord, hasten to me. Under the shadow of Your wings I take refuge” (Ps. 39, 18; 56, 2).

Meditation

1 — If you consider your misery without raising your eyes to God, Father of mercies, you will easily remain suffocated and discouraged. And if you examine yourself well, you will see that discouragement always derives from two causes intimately connected with each other: one is that, having relied on your own strength, your pride has been wounded and disappointed by the setback suffered; and the other is that, not having counted on God, you did not think of having recourse to Him and, just as you did not know how to have recourse to Him to succeed in good, so you did not know how to have recourse to Him when you fell into evil. In short, you acted alone: by yourself you tried to succeed, by yourself you fell, by yourself you considered your fall. The result of such conduct can only be discouragement; for how, in fact, will you find in yourself strength to rise again, when precisely for lack of strength you find yourself on the ground? But God does not want you to act alone. “Woe to him who is alone - says Sacred Scripture - because, when he falls, he has no one to raise him up” (Eccl. 4, 10). Woe to the man who relies his footsteps on his own strength: when he falls he will not have at his disposal God’s strength to raise him, and so he will remain in his misery, dejected and confused. As you must not formulate good resolutions without counting on God’s help to keep them, so you must not consider your falls without considering at the same time divine mercy, because as God is the only one who can help you succeed in good, so He is the only one who can help you rise from evil.

This is why all the saints have insisted that knowledge of self must never be disjoined from knowledge of God and vice versa. St. Teresa of Jesus says: “The soul that trains in self-knowledge must rise, from time to time, to consider God’s greatness and majesty. In this it will discover its own misery better than by remaining in itself, and will be less troubled by unclean little animals,” that is, by its own miseries (M. I, 2, 8).

2 — “True humility, however deep it may be, never disquiets; it never agitates, never disturbs the soul, but floods it with peace, sweetness, and rest... it expands it and renders it more able to serve God.” Whereas “the devil’s humility disturbs, upsets, throws everything into confusion and is very burdensome. If the evil one wants to make us believe we are humble, I think it is then to induce us, if he can, to distrust God” (T.G. Way 39, 2).

Lack of trust and disturbance diminish the capacity to love, and the devil’s aim is precisely to keep souls from the way of love. He tempts thus especially those who would never yield to open temptations of sin. In this case one must react, remembering that, as St. Therese of the Child Jesus teaches, “what offends Jesus and wounds His heart is lack of confidence” (Lt. 71).

Distrust in God’s mercy, even following grave falls, is never a sign of true humility, but rather of subtle pride and diabolical temptation. If Judas had been humble, instead of despairing, he would have known, like Peter, how to ask pardon and weep over his sins. Humility is the virtue that makes us stay in our place; now our place before God is that of weak and miserable children, yes, but trusting. When, after so many resolutions, you see yourself falling again into the same faults; when, after so many efforts, you still cannot conquer certain defects, overcome certain difficulties and, in one way or another, you find yourself far below what you should and would like to be, have recourse to the infallible remedy of humility. “Humility - says St. Teresa of Jesus - is the ointment that heals every wound” (M. III, 2, 6). Even if it seems to you that you have exhausted every strength, even if you feel incapable of everything and see yourself always on the ground unable to rise, one possibility still remains, that of humbling yourself. Humble yourself, humble yourself with sincerity and trust; and humility will supply for all your miseries, heal all your wounds, because it will draw down upon them divine mercy.

Colloquy

“O Lord, my misery no longer causes me amazement and I do not grieve so much to see that I am weakness itself; on the contrary, I glory in this weakness and every day I expect to discover within me always new imperfections. I confess it, Lord, these lights on my nothingness do me better than lights concerning faith...

“What illusion!... Would we want never to fall? What does it matter to me, O Jesus, to fall at every instant. I see in this my weakness and it is a great gain for me. You thereby see what I am capable of, and thus You will be obliged to carry me in Your arms... If You do not do so, it means that You like to see me on the ground... therefore I will not be disturbed, but I will always stretch toward You my supplicating and loving arms! I cannot believe that You will abandon me. “O Jesus, it is true, I am not always faithful; but I never lose courage, I abandon myself in Your arms and, like a little drop of dew, I sink myself ever more deeply in Your chalice, O divine Flower of the fields, and there I find again all I have lost and still more. “After all my blunders, instead of hiding in a corner and weeping there over my misery, I turn to You, O my Beloved, and recount in detail all my infidelities, thinking, in my audacious abandonment, to gain more empire, to draw to myself fully Your love; since You did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.

“I am happy to feel myself thus imperfect and to have such need of Your mercy. When one accepts with sweetness the humiliation of having been imperfect, Your grace, O Lord, returns at once” (T.B.G. St. 9; Lt. 65, 122, 175; NV.).