There is something oddly invigorating about discovering that one is not the center of the universe. It is rather like opening a window and discovering, to your astonishment, that the world goes on quite well without your personal supervision. This, I believe, is the beginning of wisdom – and the birthplace of humility.

Now, humility is not what the modern man imagines it to be. He thinks it a sort of sad apology for existing, a miserable muttering of “I’m not good enough”. But true humility is not thinking less of oneself – it is thinking of oneself less, because one is too busy being stunned by the glory of God. It is precisely in the Catholic spiritual life, that narrow path which twists like a mountain road where humility is not merely a virtue but a necessity. We are attempting the unthinkable: union with God. And in this adventure towards Him, self-importance and our “machismo” ego  is not only ludicrous; it is lethal.

Saint John of the Cross, that severe and splendid mystic, understood this with mathematical precision. In his Ascent of Mount Carmel, he teaches us that the soul must be stripped of every attachment. One must walk, he says, nada, nada, nada – nothing, nothing, nothing. A man cannot be filled with God if he is already full of himself.

St. Teresa of Avila, for all her heavenly visions, was hilariously human. She once complained to God, when thrown from her donkey, “If this is how You treat Your friends, no wonder You have so few.” And yet, in her Interior Castle, she tells us that humility is the mortar that holds the whole soul together. It is not in the ecstasies or raptures that the soul grows, but in the quiet, daily acceptance of its littleness. In knowing, quite simply, that we are creatures and that God is not.

It is the great paradox of Christianity that as a man shrinks, he grows. The ladder to heaven begins with a step down. The saints are not giants of will, they are beggars of grace. They have ceased to build Babels and have instead begun to whisper in prayer. The devil fell by pride; the angels rose by obedience. We do not ascend to God by building towers, but by descending into ourselves and finding there – not thrones – but dust.

The modern world is filled with slogans urging us to believe in ourselves. But the saints urge us to believe in something far greater: in Him who believed in us first, while we were yet sinners. They urge us to laugh at our own egos and to bend our knees, not as slaves, but as lovers.

 

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