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Thirteenth Saturday after Pentecost
- caelidomum
- 4 days ago
- 5 min read
Thirteenth Saturday after Pentecost. Second Means for Becoming Humble: Humiliations.
Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation.
We will meditate to-morrow upon another means for becoming humble, which is: 1st, to exercise ourselves in the practice of humility; 2d, to apply this practice to all the details of life. We will then make the resolution: 1st, to be very humble in all our prayers; 2d, to maintain in all our relations with our neighbors manners and a language conformable with humility. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of the sage: “Pride is hateful before God and men” (Ecclus. x. 7).
Meditation for the Morning.
Let us adore Jesus Christ in His crib; humiliated in His infancy; humiliated in His mature age; humiliated in His death; humiliated in the Eucharist. Let us render to Him our homage of adoration, of praise, and of love in these different states, and let us beg of Him to communicate to us the grace of them.
Humiliation, or the Practice of Humility, is the Best Means of Rendering us Humble.
There is an essential difference between humiliation and humility. Humiliation is an external fact which does not depend upon ourselves, and to which we are often subjected without desiring it. Humility is an internal fact, a disposition of the soul, which, believing itself to be contemptible, accepts humiliation as being a thing which it deserves; it is what we may call humility in practice, and what we believe to be the best means for becoming humble. In point of fact, neither the arts nor the sciences are learnt except by practice; the man who limited himself to understand the theory of medicine, of architecture, or of painting without proceeding to the practice of them would never become either a good doctor, or a good architect, or a good painter. With still stronger reason, he who does not exercise himself by means of humiliation in the practice of humility will never be humble. There is in humiliation something which makes nature afraid, and this fear, like all other kinds of fear, is only cured by affronting that which causes affright, and by proving in this way to ourselves that there was no reason to have been so troubled. At the beginning we hesitate; by degrees as we advance we become bolder; and we end not only by overcoming, but by loving humiliation, like St. John of the Cross, who desired no other recompense for all his apostolic labors except the contempt of man: “Lord Jesus, to be despised for Thy sake, that is the sole recompense I desire for all that I have done for Thee” he said to Our Lord, who had appeared to him. It is because humiliation is the direct path which leads to humility (St. Bernard, Ep. lxxxvii.), in the same way as patience leads to peace, study to knowledge. Whoever desires to be really humble ought to walk in the way of humiliation. In the same manner as an exterior act of pride produces or develops the interior sentiment, so an exterior act of humility, or, what is the same thing, a humiliation well received, increases in us the spirit of humility, because practice acts more strongly upon the will than thought or desire, because an object which is present touches us more than an object which is absent, and because experience teaches better than theory. Therefore Jesus Christ was not content with merely precepts of humility and with having a deep feeling of it in His heart; the whole of His life was a series of humiliations. And why, following His example, should we not accept them ? There is nothing bad in contempt except what there is in our refusing to suffer it. Nothing is so contemptible as the horror we feel of contempt. A true humility accepts willingly a great or a small humiliation. He who cannot suffer the slightest mark of contempt has not the slightest humility, and we shall never make progress in virtue excepting in so far as we shall be content to be abject and counted as nothing in the opinion of others. Let us measure the degree of our virtue by this principle.
In what the Practice of Humility Consists.
Humility may be practised: 1st, in our relations with God, by behaving in His presence like a poor man who has nothing; like a sick man who is ashamed of his infirmities; like a worm, crawling in the dust at the foot of His throne, saying to Him with a feeling of deep abasement, “O Lord, I am nothing and Thou art all; I can do nothing and Thou canst do everything; I am filled with horror and shame of myself, so profound is my wretchedness, whilst Thou dost ravish heaven with Thine infinite amiability.” Oh, how agreeable to God is a soul which is in this state, and how many graces does it not attract towards itself! 2d. We can practise humility in our relations with our neighbor, always taking for ourselves the least share and the lowest place, treating every one with great consideration and respect, willingly seeing all held in greater esteem than ourselves, and rejoicing to be looked upon as possessing neither wisdom nor knowledge; so that we may, at the expense of our own self-love, honor the humiliations of the Incarnate Word, receiving with a good grace advice, reproaches, even contempt, without trying to justify ourselves; never speaking of ourselves; suffering contradiction meekly and without impatience; loving to occupy ourselves with the lowly and the simple, and preferring their society to that of the great and the rich. It is by such behavior as this that the saints established and perfected themselves in humility, and it is in following their example that we shall succeed in doing so ourselves. 3d. Humility may be practised in ourselves, by cheerfully suffering such of our natural defects as humiliate us; by often keeping present to ourselves of how little worth we are, how little intelligence and judgment we possess, how insignificant is our virtue compared with that of the saints; and by turning away promptly from anything that self-love attempts to say to us about our merits and our graces; lastly, and above all, by counting as nothing the opinion of men, and placing ourselves in our own opinion below everyone else, below even the greatest sinners and infidels, who, if they had received as many graces as we have, would perhaps have been much better than we are; below even the devils, who committed only one single sin of pride, whilst we have committed so many. Let us here examine our conscience. Are these practices of humility familiar to us ?
Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.
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