+JMJ+
Faith, Hope, and Charity | Patience
Thank you for reading another issue of The Peasant Times-Dispatch, where we explore the life of faith from the perspective of a peasant—we aren’t experts, we aren’t theologians, we are just trying to do our best (and trying to mean it). Last month, we dug into Patience. This month, we will explore the virtue of Humility.
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A Summary of what we are doing here: Recall that the Theological Virtues are gifts from God which we cannot grasp by our own effort, and no amount of striving can increase in us Faith, Hope, or Charity. We can, however, work at the Cardinal virtues and in so doing better dispose ourselves to God’s working in our lives. Growing in Virtue just is disposing ourselves more to God’s perfect will than our own fallen will. In considering each of these Cardinal virtues and how they relate separately and simultaneously to Faith, Hope, and Charity, my hope is that you and I will better understand the nature of the work we are doing and so make better progress of growing in these virtues we so much desire.
A Walk With Humility
Wise men and women of the Church have talked about Humility as the foundation of all other virtues, and I don’t disagree with them. A close reader may ask, then, why I began last month with Patience instead. My explanation last month was this: “[I am beginning with Patience so that] we might recall the need for patience with others and ourselves while we undertake the work of growing in virtue.”
The timing is more or less accidental. I decided on this series ahead of January, so the rest of the liturgical year shakes out the way it’s going to shake out. The post on patience came a mere three days before Ash Wednesday, and so I think that was timely. Lent is a long stretch of desert, and we need patience with ourselves and with our Lenten practices and with others. Patience sets the tone from the beginning—this is going to take a while.
Humility follows naturally, in my opinion. We need the patience to undertake work that will take a long time to finish1. We need the humility to examine ourselves and really see where the work is needed most. A doctor would not be a very good doctor who could not see what ails his patients; and the words of Jesus echo in my ears as I write these articles: “Physician, heal thyself”. If the physician can’t diagnose his patients, how can he hope to diagnose himself? We need humility for this purpose.
A quick note on humility though, especially in our modern age. I don’t remember who said it2, but there is a saying that goes, “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less,” and I found that really helpful. Think first of God, then of your neighbor—and you will find humility taking root in your soul.
We find some surprisingly practical tips from Christ himself to help us in this regard. In Luke 14 he describes the parable of the wedding feast, and the embarrassment of choosing a higher seat at the table and being asked to go lower as opposed to choosing a lower seat and being asked to sit higher. This doesn’t only apply to the ancients, this applies today. How often do we find ourselves in situations without clear social guidance for what to do? “Do we sit, do we stand? Are we allowed to eat yet? I don’t know who these people are who just walked in?” In this parable Christ offers a standing order: In any situation, choose the ‘lowest seat at the table’. If chairs are few, stand until the host asks you to sit; if you aren’t sure if you are allowed to eat, wait for everyone else to eat first; if you don’t know who certain people are, offer them a chair or take their coat. These might sound over-the-top but this thinking has saved me, personally, from lots of embarrassment because I tend to overthink social situations. There’s no room to overthink with the standing order: Choose the lowest seat.
Humility is the virtue contrary to the sin of pride, and pride is something we all know; but because we think we know it we sometimes forget all it’s implications. Pride thinks of self first, takes the higher seat at the table, satisfies its own wants and desires first. When we have accomplished something, Pride says “I did this,” where humility says “God did this through me”. Pride wants public acclaim, social status (however small). Pride wants to be noticed. Humility wants to be invisible3.
St. Josemaria Escriva cuts to the core of the matter quite succinctly: “You…proud? About what?”4
Root Out Of Us All Pride
O Lord Jesus Christ, pattern of humility, who didst empty Thyself of Thy glory, and take upon Thee the form of a servant: root out of us all pride and conceit of heart, that, owning ourselves miserable and guilty sinners, we may willingly bear contempt and reproaches for Thy sake, and, glorying in nothing but Thee, may esteem ourselves lowly in Thy sight. Not unto us, O Lord, but to Thy name be the praise, for Thy loving mercy and for Thy truth’s sake. Amen.
Humility permits us to imitate Christ in emptying ourselves of glory and bearing reproaches and contempt. Christ of course, being God, is the only one5 due glory and He voluntarily set that aside in order that we might be saved. From such heights did our God stoop for us! How slight are our achievements compared to God, and how loudly do we shout about our tiniest accomplishment! No, Christ gives us the model of humility that all pride and conceit of heart be rooted out and leave nothing but His image in us.
Charity—love—is an antidote to pride, because it desires the good for others even at our own expense, just as God so loved the world that He gave us His only begotten son. Can we say we love with a divine love if we hold out hope that some glory will be ours? I don’t think so; it must be an emptying of self. To love, and be loved, is what makes Psalm 23 so potent. We want for nothing if we have only the love of God. To dispose ourselves to divine love qua theological virtue takes the humility to think of ourselves less.
If you recall the post where I look closer at Faith, Hope, and Charity you can see Hope has some interesting dimensions to it. Hope for heaven, sure, but also it helps us to acknowledge the supernatural nature of souls and to work according to our super-nature. Hope to perform works pleasing to God and which redound to our salvation. Growing in humility disposes us to receive the theological virtue of Hope insofar as it gives honor and glory to God for works God accomplishes through us, and if our works have any merit at the end we leave it to God to decide and not us. Hope is what lets us do everything for love of God and leave nothing for ourselves, and it takes humility to put us in that proper frame.
Finally, recalling Faith which is loyalty and fidelity among other things. Imagine for a moment you hired a servant whom you paid a fair wage to perform a specific task. If that servant went around town after hours saying “Look at me, I did this task! I am the greatest!” he would seem, at best, ungrateful. We can be this ungrateful servant in relation to God by proclaiming our own works, and not giving credit to our Lord who gave us the gifts which made our works possible. It is an exercise in Humility to remember this. This disposes us to faith because it inspires loyalty and fidelity to so good a God who showers us with these blessings even though we know how unworthy of them we truly are.
Humility Hack
There is one weird trick I use to help me calibrate my faltering practice of humility, and it has challenged me a lot and I fail to implement this trick frequently. It is, however, the most practical guide I can think of.
The Litany of Humility is famously a dangerous prayer to pray, and you can and should pray it especially if you think Pride is a particular spiritual danger. But I want to offer practical actions here, more than prayer (which you can and should do).
Here’s the one weird trick: try to keep things a secret from strangers. If you want to do a good deed, try not to let even the recipient know who helped them; try not to let strangers know you did a good deed. Ignore those short-form videos where people record themselves giving huge sums of money away. Small deeds done in secret allow all the glory of them to go to God, because no one can glorify you if no one knows you were involved.
Here’s the other side of the coin: try to keep little sufferings a secret from strangers too. We are social beings, and so when we stub our toes it is so easy to reach out to our friend and say “Boo hoo I just stubbed my toe!” We are told in scripture that, when we fast, we ought to take care of ourselves so that we do not appear to be fasting. We are told not to let the right hand know what the left hand is doing. Keeping suffering hidden helps us grow in humility in a somewhat counterintuitive way: without a recourse to social reinforcement6 we can turn our attention to God, and offer our suffering to God, and find a way to accept it willingly and dare I say joyfully. Then our secret sufferings turn into songs of praise to God, and not counterintuitive attention-seeking, especially in this age of social media. Small sufferings suffered in secret rarify our attention on God and forces us to find a new perspective on them.
In my conversations with people in my daily life, I have been shocked and surprised at the humility of people going about in daily life. The sufferings they are quietly carrying, the good deeds they undertake secretly—there are people out there doing the good work for the Kingdom and we would never know. We like to romanticize the ‘old lady praying the rosary for the world’, but we may never know how much a strangers prayer has protected us from evil and brought us closer to God.
Prayer, of course, being the first recourse of the humble. It is possible to be proud of prayer—we are told to take that to our hidden rooms as well. Our Blessed Mother did a lot of pondering in her heart and we have no idea what she was thinking. But we know the fruit of her actions was to point away from herself and point to Christ. When we do good things in secret, when we try to prevent our good deeds from being known, we are taking the ‘lowest seat at the table’. If God wants them to be known, there will be no stopping it. And that should only inspire more gratitude and glory to God for his miraculous works, and should stifle the sin of pride.
Looking Forward
This post has been meditations on humility. The next post in this series will cover Diligence, and how that virtue disposes us to Faith, Hope, and Charity. Is there something about the virtue of Humility you think I missed, or a question you would like me to answer about any of the virtues covered so far? Send me a DM—I will answer your questions anonymously in a future post.
If you liked this essay, make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss the rest of the series! Or if you think someone you know needs to read some of what I’ve said, share it with your friends! Otherwise, thank you so much for reading. I look forward to bringing you more essays in this new format for Season Four.
AJPM
To suggest that it is possible to finish this work is problematic on my part. It will never be ‘done’. But you can progress.
I swear I’ve seen it attributed to CS Lewis but what ISN’T attributed to CS Lewis these days
St. Joseph comes to mind. He does his job and then disappears from the Gospels.
The Way, #600
Three-in-One
“For they have received their reward!”