The path to humility

 

"To the question "how am I to arrive at humility?", the immediate answer is: "by the grace of God" (...). Only the grace of God can give us the clear vision of our own condition and the awareness of its greatness that gives rise to humility". That is why we must desire it and ask for it unceasingly, convinced that with this virtue we will love God and be capable of great undertakings in spite of our weaknesses....

Together with the petition, we must accept the humiliations, usually small, that arise every day for so many different reasons: in the accomplishment of our own work, in living together with others, in noticing our weaknesses, in seeing the mistakes we make, great and small. It is said of St. Thomas Aquinas that one day he was corrected for a supposed lack of grammar while reading; he corrected it as instructed. Then his companions asked him why he had corrected it if he himself knew that the text as he had read it was correct. And the saint answered: "A fault in grammar is worth more before God than a fault in obedience and humility". We walk the path of humility when we accept humiliations, small or great, and when we accept our own defects and try to struggle with them.

He who is humble does not need too much praise and accolades in his task, because his hope is placed in the Lord; and He is, in a real and true way, the source of all his goods and his happiness: It is He who gives meaning to all that He does. "One of the reasons why men are so prone to praise themselves, to overestimate their own worth and their own powers, to resent anything that tends to lower them in their own esteem or in that of others, is because they see no hope for their happiness but themselves. This is why they are often so touchy, so resentful when criticized, so annoying to anyone who contradicts them, so insistent on having their own way, so eager to be known, so eager for praise, so determined to rule their environment. They cling to themselves as a castaway clings to a straw. And life goes on, and they are farther and farther from happiness..."

He who strives to be humble seeks neither praise nor accolades; and if they come, he seeks to direct them to the glory of God, the Author of all good. Humility manifests itself not so much in contempt as in self-forgetfulness, recognizing with joy that we have nothing that we have not received, and leads us to feel that we are God's little children who find all firmness in the strong hand of their Father.



We learn to be humble by meditating on the Passion of Our Lord, considering his greatness in the face of so much humiliation, his letting himself be made like a lamb led to the slaughter, as prophesied, his humility in the Holy Eucharist, where he waits for us to come to see and speak to him, ready to be received by whoever approaches the Banquet he prepares for us each day, his patience in the face of so many offenses.... We will learn to walk along this path if we look to Mary, the Handmaid of the Lord, the one who had no other desire than to do the will of God. We also turn to St. Joseph, who spent his life in serving Jesus and Mary, carrying out the task God had entrusted to him.



Hablar con Dios