34 — HUMILIATIONS

Presence of God. — O Jesus, humbled for me even unto abjection, teach me to humble myself for love of You.

Meditation

1 — Many like to be humble, but few like to be humbled; many with fervent prayers ask God for humility, but very few ask for humiliation, and yet without humiliation it is impossible to attain humility, because, as study is the means to acquire knowledge, so humiliation is the means to acquire humility.

As long as you desire humility but do not know how to accept humiliations, you cannot think yourself on the way of true humility; and even if in certain encounters you know how to behave humbly, it is more superficial and apparent humility than real and profound humility. Humility is truth and therefore tells you that, having of your own only sin, by right of justice what belongs to you is only humiliation and contempt. If you were really convinced of this, you would find very just that all should humble you, treat you badly, despise you. For in fact, what honors and regards does one deserve who has offended his Creator, when one single sin, even venial, is more deplorable and merits greater contempt than any state of misery, poverty, or earthly ignobility?

Deeply persuaded of this, the Saints never considered humiliations inflicted on them too grave, indeed they always found them inferior to what they thought they deserved. “I have never heard so much evil said of me - said St. Teresa of Jesus - without seeing at the same time that it was still too little. If they accused me falsely on one point, I saw that I had offended the Lord on many others and that they did me a great charity by not speaking of them” (Way 15, 3).

“Have patience, then, in your humiliations, because, as gold is tested by fire, so man in the crucible of humiliation” (cf. Sir. 2, 4 and 5). If you feel the weight of your pride and truly desire to be freed from it, accept every humiliation and through them the Lord will break your pride.

2 — Rather than seek humiliations on your own initiative, dispose yourself to accept well those inflicted on you against your liking. Because, while in humiliations you impose on yourself there can be mingled a subtle pride - as would be, for example, wanting to be held humble - such danger does not exist at all for humiliations that, despite yourself, come to you from others. Even in this case, in order to produce its fruit, humiliation must be accepted voluntarily. In fact, it is not humiliation in itself that makes you humble, but the act of will with which you accept it. St. Bernard teaches that it is very different to be humiliated and to be humble. One can say that, in one way or another, everyone meets humiliations in life, yet few are those who become humble, precisely because few are those who accept humiliation and submit to it with patience.

What use is it to receive humiliations if, instead of accepting them, you react and reject them with resentment, with annoyance, and grow indignant against those who procure them?

Certainly, humiliation cannot be pleasing to our proud and touchy nature; nevertheless, though feeling its bitterness, you must strive to accept it willingly, repeating in your heart: good for me, O Lord, that I have been humbled. If, despite all the repugnances and resentments of nature, by an act of will you submit to humiliation and protest to God that you want to be content with it and want to taste it to the full, little by little you will become humble. Little by little the hard and bitter bread of humiliations will become sweet and gentle to you; but to this gentleness one arrives only after long exercise, for besides, what counts most is not gentleness, but the will to accept all that humiliates us. “Let yourself be taught, let yourself be commanded, let yourself be subjected and you will be perfect” (J.C. S.C. II, 33).

Colloquy

“O Lord, what injury can ever be done to a person like me who has deserved to be tormented by demons for all eternity? If they treat me badly in this world, is it not perhaps with justice? Truly, O Lord, in this respect I really have nothing to offer You... I acknowledge myself so guilty before You that I see those who injure me still treat me too well, when, not knowing who I am, as You know me, they believe they offend me” (T.G. Way 36, 2).

My God, it is very true! the only thing that to me, a sinner, belongs by right is humiliation, injury, contempt. And yet how reluctant and excessively sensitive I am before all that wounds my pride! You know it, my God, how much I desire to be stripped of my pride; and I can well say that, with the help of Your grace, I detest it and nothing in me seems more hateful. Yet I do not know how to accept the remedy You present to me. How shall I have courage, Lord, to ask You for humiliations, when so many times I have rejected them, turning them from medicine into occasion for new acts of pride?

How many times, instead of seeing in humiliations the remedy You procured for me to heal me of pride, my gaze has stopped at the creatures of whom You made use to humble me and I have become irritated, angry against them, I have rebelled as before an injustice. How blind I am, O Lord, how I have strayed from Your ways! Come give light again to my soul, come place me in truth, come lead me back on the good and sure way of humiliations.

I do not ask You for particular humiliations, but I ask You to dispose my heart to accept well those which in Your love and in Your infinite mercy You have prepared on my path from eternity. You have prepared the medicine suitable to my pride; if until today I have so often refused to put my lips to it, now help me not to let even the smallest portion escape me any more. I am sick, O Lord, and as the sick man desires the medicine that heals him and swallows it even if bitter, so I, sustained by Your grace, want to accept, want to drink to the last drop every humiliation. But help me Yourself, O sweetest Jesus who willed to know humiliation, because without You I know only how to fail in my resolutions.