200. Fourth Tuesday of Ordinary Time

Meditations no. 79 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

Humility: the foundation of our lives.

Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. St Peter the Apostle speaks to us of the need to be humble if we are to please God. And the Gospel in today’s Mass tells of a sick woman who, moved by faith, humbly approaches Christ, looking to be healed. St Mark writes that she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said,”If I touch even his garments, I shall be made well.”

Nothing can separate us from God as much as pride. A heart that is filled with self-love has no room for God. The holiness we seek can be summed up in the words that John the Baptist spoke of Christ: He must increase, but I must decrease, Our Lord’s life must increase within us until we become “other Christs”, and our intellect and our will, our powers and our affections, all we are and all we do, become entirely his. Humility is essential if we are to achieve complete self-giving, and if we are to become channels by which God’s grace and the spirit of the Work can reach mankind.

Let us be humble. Let us seek nothing but the glory of God. Our life of silent and hidden self-giving should be a constant act of humility. Humility is the foundation for our whole life, the means and prerequisite for our effectiveness. Pride and vanity might attract us to the vocation of a Chinese lantern, which shines and sparkles for everyone to admire, but which lasts only one night and then goes out, leaving no trace behind.

No, you should seek to burn away in a corner somewhere, like those sanctuary lamps that accompany the tabernacle in the half-light of an oratory, and are seen above all by God. Without making a show of it, try to accompany the people around you: your friends, colleagues, relatives, and especially the others in the Work. Accompany them with your example, your teaching, your work, your calm, your cheerfulness.

Vita vestra est abscondita cum Christo in Deo. (Your life is hid with Christ in God. What God thinks, not what other people think, is what matters.

These words of our Father light up our whole life. Without humility, everything we do would be sterile. If we allowed self-sufficiency and pride into our interior life, dialogue with God would be impossible. In our apostolate, which should be based on friendship, pride would put a barrier between us and others, and make it impossible for us to help or understand them. Our cheerfulness also depends on our being humble, because it is humility that enables us to lead an authentic existence, in which we aim to serve God and others, but without being worried about appearing less than perfect, and without letting our faults upset us.

Thanks to humility, we experience, alongside our weakness, all of God’s strength.

We pray in the words of the Psalm: Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy. Preserve my life, for I am godly; save your servant who trusts in you.

When we try to be humble, we feel God’s power acting in us, on the basis of our weakness; and we come to understand that we are never stronger than when we have only God to rely on. We also learn that age and experience alone are not a guarantee that we will get things right; otherwise all old people would be geniuses. It is God who makes us more prudent than our teachers and wiser than the aged.

People who are humble realize that their life is in the hands of God: in manibus tuis sortes meae (my fate is in your hands). And when they turn to God in their prayer, they do so without pride, without putting on false airs and graces, since they know that their mistakes and sins are not hidden from God’s sight.

Humility prevents us from becoming discouraged at our own faults. Our Father God knows what kind of clay we are made op Though a vessel of clay may sometimes crack or break, if there is humility it can be put together again with staples which will add to its attractiveness, and which are undoubtedly pleasing to God. My children, human weaknesses give our God a chance to shine forth and to show his almighty power, by excusing and forgiving. Mirifica misericordias tuas, qui salvos facis sperantes in te, Domine. Show forth your infinite mercy, my God, by saving those who hope in you.

Humility makes us strong, because it makes us small, like little children. Don’t forget, silly child, that Love has made you all-powerful. It leads us to abandon ourselves into the arms of our heavenly Father who takes every care of us. He took our infirmities and bore our diseases. Humility makes us see things as they are and face up to ourselves in God’s presence. May our stumbles and defeats separate us from Him no more. Just as a feeble child throws itself contritely into the strong arms of its father, you and I will hold tightly to the yoke of Jesus. Only a contrition and humility like this can transform our human weakness into the fortitude of God.

Humility doesn’t stop us from aspiring to greatness, but it reminds us that we are only instruments.

To be humble in accordance with our spirit means being natural, in the way our Father always recommended: it means being simple and straightforward in our dealings with God and with other people. Since we live in the middle of the world, our humility must never become confused with timidity or a lack of self-confidence.

It may be, our Father points out, that an asceticism that is proper to religious orders could involve some rather eye-catching expressions of humility. But in the Work the exact opposite is the case. As our sanctity hinges on our work, we need to build up professional expertise and respect, and each of us will acquire, in our own job and social sphere, the dignity and good name we deserve, gained in honest competition with our professional colleagues. Our humility doesn’t entail being timid and shy, or lacking in daring in the field of noble human endeavour. With a supernatural spirit and a desire to serve - with a Christian spirit of service - we must strive to be among the best.

Some people without a genuine lay outlook on life understand humility as a lack of confidence, a kind of indecisiveness that stops them from doing things. They think it involves waiving their rights (sometimes even the rights of truth and justice) in order to avoid friction and disagreements, so that they can be nice to everyone. There will always be some who don’t understand our way of practising a deep - and genuine - humility; they may even call it pride. The Christian concept of this virtue has been severely deformed, possibly because the various forms of humility that people have attempted to transfer onto secular society are really more suited to convents than to Christians whose vocation requires them to be at the crossroads of the world.

The humility which the Work asks of us goes very deep. It is a direct result of the contemplative conversation which we try to keep up with God sine intermissione (without interruption). It brings with it the profound conviction that it is God our Father who does everything, while using us as the poor instruments that we are: Servi inutiles sumus (we are unworthy servants). He plays with each of us as with a child: ludens in orbe terrarum et deliciae meae esse cum filiis hominum (playing on the face of the earth and my delight is to be with the sons of men). Through the happiness that fills our whole life, we offer our friends living proof that to follow Christ is to find the human and supernatural fulfilment to which we are called.

How great the value of humility! Quia respexit humilitatem… It is not of her faith, nor of her charity, nor of her immaculate purity that our Mother speaks in the house of Zachary. Her joyful hymn sings, “Since he has looked on my humility, all generations will call me blessed.”

Let us ask Mary to remove every trace of pride from our hearts so that every day we may become more closely identified with her Son. Then we will be able to carry out more fruitfully the work of co-redemption to which we have been called.