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Twelfth Saturday after Pentecost
- caelidomum
- Sep 5
- 4 min read
Twelfth Saturday after Pentecost. Eighteenth Reason for Being Very Humble: Self-love Robs Us of All Our Merits.
Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation.
We will meditate to-morrow upon an eighteenth reason for being very humble; it is that in our self-love we have the shame of carrying about with us a treacherous thief who: 1st, takes away our merits; and, 2d, takes them often away without our being conscious of it. We will then make the resolution: 1st, in all our actions to direct our intention towards God alone, often saying to Him before and during our actions: All to please Thee, O my God; 2d, carefully to put away from us all other aims which might vitiate our intention. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of Jeremias: “See, O Lord, and consider, for I am become vile” (Lam. i. 11).
Meditation for the Morning.
Let us adore God as the last end as well as the first principle of the whole of our being. In His presence we are but nothingness and sin, and we have no right to do anything, to say anything, or to think anything which has any other end save Him alone. To Him essentially belong all honor, all glory, and everything related to us. Let us abase ourselves in presence of His adorable majesty, and be filled with humble sentiments regarding ourselves.
Self-love Takes from us the Merit of our Good Works.
We ought to keep ourselves on our guard against self-love as we should be on our guard against a thief who was trying to rob us of all that we have which is most precious. What, in fact, have we that is more precious here below than our good works, which are, as it were, the money with which heaven is bought, and with which we may obtain at any moment of our ex 1stence an increase of glory and of happiness for all eternity ? Neither riches nor treasures are worth a possession so great. The humble man preserves this possession in all its integrity, and adds to it the new merit of humility, which infinitely elevates His actions; but self-love squanders the whole of this treasure. It will have done us no good to have labored much, to have given ourselves an infinity of trouble and anxiety; if self-love intervenes, not only will there remain nothing of what might have enriched us, but we shall even be poorer than we were at first. That which might so greatly have profited us will turn against us, and we shall have nothing to expect from God excepting the punishment of the proud. What a loss, what a misfortune, not to be humble ! This is why Our Lord repeated so often in His Sermon on the Mount: “Take care not to do your good works before men, that you may be seen of them, otherwise you will receive no reward from your Father who is in heaven. When you give alms try to ignore it yourself, by avoiding to take pleasure in your good works, and let your left hand be ignorant of what your right does. Then your heavenly Father, who seeth in secret, will recompense you for it. When you pray, do not let it be in the sight of the world, but delight to pray in secret, and your heavenly Father, who seeth in secret, will reward you” (Matt. vi. I, et seq.). Oh, how good then it is to be humble, to close our eyes to all human judgments, and to think only of the good pleasure of God alone ! What strange compensations does not self-love offer us ! If we had given all our goods to the poor, spent our lives in good works, delivered up our bodies to the flames, all would have no merit in the eyes of God, if self-love has intervened as the determining motive. Let us here examine ourselves in the presence of God. How many have not been the actions of our life from which self-love has taken away all the merit ! What riches lost for heaven, and in their place, perhaps, reasons for condemnation at the tribunal of God !
Self-love often Takes from us the Merit of our Works when we are not Aware of it.
As what is familiar and long continued ends by being no longer observed, so self-love, which hardly ever leaves us, escapes our observation and hides itself from our eyes. It is the pulsations of the heart, which are not remarked because they are habitual, or it is because it hides itself under an appearance of virtue. We fancy we are laboring for God, and we are laboring only for ourselves. The good is seen on the sur face, and at the bottom it is self-love which, unknown to us, has put all in motion. We began the action with an upright intention; then motives springing from self-love intervened and took possession of the heart because they were more in harmony with its natural egotism. Hence so many illusions which enter into piety and good works; hence the impatience and vivacity which we imagine to be the ardor of zeal; hence the discouragements when self-love is not paid on the spot by the hoped-for success. Let us examine ourselves upon so important and practical a subject.
Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.
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