“Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God . . . emptied himself” (Phil 2: 5-7). We never sufficiently meditate upon these words of the Apostle. All Christians are called to follow Jesus in the way of humility, and in order to do this must “become as nothing”, that is, rid themselves of pride by accepting what destroys it: humiliations, especially the interior humiliation of noting our own deficiencies, shortcomings, and lack of faithfulness, and then the exterior humiliations which stem from the fact that our limitations and faults and errors are being observed by others.
Many desire to be humble, but few welcome being humiliated; many beg for humility, but then in practice fly from humiliations. Yet, just as study is the means of acquiring knowledge, so humiliation is the way to acquire humility. Besides, humiliation is the just lot of sinful man.
Practice the virtue of humility “through which we share in Christ’s self-surrende. Whoever desires to be intimately associated with the mystery of Christ—as a religious vocation demands—must enter deeply into the way of his self-abasement. Of ourselves we are not capable of this; we need Christ himself to lead us into it, by making us share his humiliations. All the injustices, accusations, insults, misunderstandings and failures which we encounter in life are means to this; and by accepting them for the love of Christ, we open ourselves to the gift of his divine humility, and enter into the mystery of him who emptied himself for the glory of the Father and the salvation of mankind.
By following Christ, humbled even to death on the cross, we take our place among those who give glory to God and help to save their brothers. Even the most stubborn are conquered and vanquished by humility.
O Christ, Son of God you took the lowest place and treated yourself as the last of men . . . throughout your whole life. This is how you wished to be treated by sinners, by demons, by the Holy Spirit and by your eternal Father. All this was in order to glorify your Father . . . to repair the dishonor given to him by our pride, to confound and destroy our arrogance, to make us hate vanity and love humility. How pride dishonors God and how horribly displeasing it must be to him since it was necessary that you, the Son of God, should thus humble yourself!
What a dreadful vice is vanity when you had to lower yourself to such depths of abasement in order to destroy it! How precious is humility in the sight of God and how pleasing to him since you, his divine Son, wished to be treated in this way in order to make us love humility, to incite us to imitate you in its practice and to obtain for us the grace to practice it.
St. John Eudes
No comments:
Post a Comment