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Twelfth Tuesday after Pentecost
- caelidomum
- Sep 1
- 4 min read
Updated: Sep 6
Twelfth Tuesday after Pentecost. Fourteenth Reason for Being Very Humble: Humility the Remedy for our Miseries and the Key of Graces.
Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation.
We will meditate tomorrow upon a fourteenth reason for being very humble; it is because humility is: 1st, the remedy for all our miseries; 2d, the key of all graces. We will then form the resolution: 1st, to make our miseries serve daily to increase our growth in humility, by humbling ourselves profoundly before God; 2d, to carry into our prayers a deep sentiment of our littleness and of our unworthiness to speak to God. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of the Imitation: “The most useful of all knowledge is to know how to despise ourselves” (I. Imit. ii. 4).
Meditation for the Morning.
Let us adore Our Lord covered with the appearance of sin and the form of a slave abased down to nothingness (Philipp. ii. 7). Let us render our homage to our divine Saviour in this state. The more He abases Himself for us, the more respect and love we owe Him.
Humility is the Remedy for all our Miseries.
We have all of us passions to conquer, and we do not know how to reach the end of them; temptations to overcome, and we do not know how to get rid of them; prayers and spiritual exercises to perform, and often our minds are so distracted, our hearts so arid and disgusted, that we do not know how to acquit ourselves of them. Now humility, the true universal remedy, cures all these weaknesses. It attacks all our passions at once, weakens them, casts them down almost without a combat, and reduces them by taking from them their principal food, which is self-love. Under the inspiration of humility, the soul, ashamed of itself, sees the passions which exist in it under the form of so many hideous lepers, the sight of which excites horror; it is filled with profound abasement and cries out towards Thee, O Lord, from the bottom of the abyss (Ps. cxxix. i): “Have pity on my great misery, O my God. How canst Thou endure me ? How canst Thou love me who am so poor and so mean ? Oh, I am worth nothing-. How miserable I am, how I deserve the contempt of all creatures, and still more Thine, O Lord.” And in this humble state no passion can stand its ground. Our temptations also have no power of resistance. The tempted soul turns towards God and is con founded. “Lord,” it says with St. Teresa, “behold what my evil nature is capable of producing. I know well that plant of my garden. Thanks, Lord, for having shown me what I am, a corrupted nature, an abyss of miseries; all kinds of vices have their seeds in my heart. How ill then would it become me to indulge in self-love, to look upon myself as being anything and to desire that others should esteem me ! How ill it becomes me to count upon myself and to expose myself to occasions of sin ! I will fly from them, Lord, and with Thy help I will triumph over my enemies.” But it is above all in states of powerlessness to pray, in aridities and distractions, that humility is the supreme remedy. Then the soul is confounded in the presence of God; ashamed of its insolence, which forgets the respect due to so lofty a majesty; ashamed of its misery, which does not even know how to ask God for the spiritual alms of which it has need; then it quietly resumes its prayer where it left it off and continues it in a spirit of humility. If aridities or distractions return, the soul recommences its exercise of humility, without being troubled and without vexation; and thus it performs all its prayers, the best assuredly which it can per form, for the best prayer is that from which we issue forth the most humble. Oh, what an excel lent remedy then is humility for all our miseries!
Humility is the Key of all Graces.
The Holy Spirit says so: “God gives His grace to the humble” (James iv. 6). The reason is: 1st, because all graces are attached to prayer, and because the prayer of the humble soul is always granted (Ecclus. xxxv. 21). The publican cannot say anything more than a few humble words, and those words obtain for him his justification; whilst the prayer of the soul which esteems itself and is pleased with itself is always rejected by God. 2d. As the waters of heaven cast themselves down from the mountains into the valleys, so the waters of grace do not stay upon the souls which lift themselves up in their own esteem like mountains, or which do not descend by humility below the common level, but they concentrate and collect together in the souls which abase themselves in their own eyes. A humble soul is a large vessel into which God sheds His graces in proportion to its depth. Such is always the way in which God proceeds; the more humble a soul is, the higher He raises it in grace. “Let us humble our souls before Him and humbly wait for His consolation” (Jud. viii. 16, 20).
Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.
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