For behold I was born in iniquities: and in sins did my mother conceive
me. (Psalm L., v. 7.)
1. Few persons have a correct idea of this virtue. It is frequently
confused with servility or littleness.
2. To attribute to God what is God's, that is to say everything that is
good, and to ourselves what is ours, that is to say, everything that is
evil: these are the essential characteristics of true humility.
*Hence it would appear at first sight that simple good sense ought to
suffice to make men humble. Such would be the case were it not that our
faculties have been impaired and vitiated in their very source by pride,
that direful and ineffaceable consequence of original sin. The first man,
a creature owing his existence directly to God, was bound to dedicate it
entirely to Him and to pay continual homage for it is as for all the
other gifts he had received. This was a duty of simple justice. The day
whereon he asserted a desire to be independent, he caused an utter
derangement in the relations of the creature with his Creator. Pride,
that tendency to self-sufficiency, to refer to self the use of the
faculties received from God--pride, introduced into the soul of the first
man by a free act of his will, has attached itself as an indelible stigma
to the souls of all his descendants, and has become forevermore a part of
their nature. Thence comes this inclination, ever springing up afresh, to
be independent, to be something of ourselves, to desire for ourselves
esteem, affection and honor, despite the precepts of the divine law, the
claims of justice and the warnings of reason; and thus it is that the
whole spiritual life is but one long and painful conflict against this
vicious propensity. Divine grace though sustaining us in the combat never
gives us a complete victory, for the struggle must endure until
death,--the closing chastisement of our original degradation and the only
one that can obliterate the last traces thereof. (See _Imitation_, B.
III., Ch. XIII.--XXII.)*
3. As God drew from nothingness everything that exists, in like manner
does He wish to lay the foundations of our spiritual perfection upon the
knowledge of our nothingness. Saint Bonaventure used to say: _Provided
God be all, what matters it that I am nothing!_
4. When a Christian who is truly humble commits a fault he repents but is
not disquieted, because he is not surprised that what is naught but
misery, weakness and corruption, should be miserable, weak and corrupt.
He thanks God on the contrary that his fall has not been more serious.
Thus Saint Catherine of Genoa, whenever she found she had been guilty of
some imperfection, would calmly exclaim: _Another weed from my garden!_
This peaceful contemplation of our sinfulness was considered very
important by Saint Francis de Sales also, for he says: "Let us learn to
bear with our imperfections if we wish to attain perfection, for this
practice nourishes the virtue of humility."
5. Some persons have the erroneous idea that in order to be humble they
must not recognize in themselves any virtue or talent whatsoever. The
reverse is the case according to Saint Thomas, for he says it is
necessary to realize the gifts we have received that we may return thanks
for them to Him from whom we hold them. To ignore them is to fail in
gratitude towards God, and to neglect the object for which He gave them
to us. All that we have to do is to avoid the folly of taking glory to
ourselves because of them. Mules, asses and donkeys may be laden with
gold and perfumes and yet be none the less dull and stupid animals. The
graces we have received, far from giving us any personal claims, only
serve to increase our debt to Him who is their source and their donor.
6. Praise is naturally more pleasing to us than censure. There is nothing
sinful in this preference, for it springs from an instinct of our human
nature of which we cannot entirely divest ourselves. Only the praise must
be always referred to Him to whom it is due, that is to say, to God; for
they are His gifts that are praised in us as we are but their bearers and
custodians and shall one day have to render Him an account for them in
accordance with their value.
7. The soul that is most humble will also have the greatest courage and
the most generous confidence in God; the more it distrusts itself, the
more it will trust in Him on whom it relies for all its strength, saying
with Saint Paul: _I can do all things in Him who strengtheneth me_.[11]
Saint Thomas clearly proves that true Christian humility, far from
debasing the soul, is the principle of everything that is really noble
and generous. He who refuses the work to which God calls him because of
the honor and éclat that accompany it, is not humble but mistrustful and
pusillanimous. We shall find in obedience light to show us with certainty
that to which we are called and to preserve us from the illusions of
self-love and of our natural inclinations.
*"We should be actuated by a generous and noble humility, a humility that
does nothing in order to be praised and omits nothing that ought to be
done through fear of being praised."--Saint Francis de Sales.*
8. It is even good and sometimes necessary to make known the gifts we
have received from God and the good works of which divine grace has made
us the instruments, when this manifestation can conduce to the glory of
His name, the welfare of the Church, or the edification of the faithful.
It was for this threefold object that Saint Paul spoke of his apostolic
labors and supernatural revelations.
XII.
RESIGNATION.