Humility is the condition for greatness

Humility is not false modesty but an invitation to transformation

St. Edith Stein, transformed into Sister Teresia Benedicta of the Cross

A week ago on August 9, we celebrated the feast day of St. Edith Stein. She’s a saint who has greatly affected my spiritual life. If you’re not familiar with her story, she was a philosopher who studied under some of the greatest minds in Europe before eventually abandoning her atheism and entering the Church. She left her academic career behind, taking on the name of Teresia Benedicta. She disappeared to the world. Eventually, she was martyred during the Second World War.

A quick aside. Last week I was privileged to baptize and confirm a young lady who entered the Church and she chose St. Edith Stein as her confirmation name. Because the Old Mass liturgical calendar is different, I didn’t realize at the time that the very day she came into the Church was the feast day of St. Edith Stein. Furthermore, the young lady herself hadn’t planned it that way! I cannot help but think that St. Edith was somewhere there in the background, laughing a little bit and arranging everything just so within God’s providence. That’s how she works. Incredibly intelligent and gifted, successful, and respected, St. Edith preferred to disappear into the suffering of the Cross. When she entered the convent, she knew what she was giving up, saying, “When we are reduced to nothingness in the highest degree of humility, then the spiritual union of the soul with God takes place.”

With this, we arrive at our theme of humility. The Mass Introit urges us to cast our cares on God, the offertory likewise encourages trust not in ourselves but in Our Lord, St. Paul clarifies in the lesson that our spiritual gifts originate in God and not in ourselves, and then we have the parable Our Lord tells which reveals the hypocrisy of those who “trust in themselves.” The Pharisee who prays without humility is wasting his words, but the one who prays with humility stands justified, or as St. Edith might say, is making progress towards spiritual union with God.

Another quick aside about the principle of interpretative humility. When we read the Scriptures, our instinct is to identify with those of good heart who healed, saved, converted, and so on. In fact, Our Lord tells this parable because he wants us to beware of how we are like the Pharisee. Whenever Our Lord chastises the arrogant, the proud, the hypocrite, he means us. Really, we are meant to identify with both pharisee and sinner throughout the Scriptures, the one as a warning the other as a comfort, but to do so, our interpretation must include humility both to know that we need forgiveness and also the humility to understand that even our achievements belong to God. If we think any good we accomplish originates from us, we’re sorely mistaken. We do good in participation with God’s goodness.

Notice, here, what humility really is. Like all the virtues, it’s temperate and falls between the extremes of pride and self-loathing. Humility is the willingness to disappear, but not because we’re ashamed or mediocre or timid. No, we disappear into our strength. Into God. We disappear into greatness.

Humility is a funny thing. If you’ve ever been publicly humbled, you know it’s not a pleasant experience. I remember the first time, back when I was an Anglican cleric, I tried to sing a Eucharistic preface. I sounded like a strangled cat. I tend to be an arrogant man. My mother would say I’ve always been this way and she doesn’t know how to fix me, and I’ve learned the hard way over the years that I don’t have so very much to be arrogant about but still the vice lingers. I think you could say, however, in that moment when everyone was watching me struggle with singing in a very public way and my throat was tightening up and my face flushed red, I learned a lesson in humility (and I’ve had many more lessons!)

The word humility is from the word humus, meaning it’s of the earth. To be humble is to have both feet on the ground, to not be off in some flight of fancy, to recognize that we are not the makers of our own selves but we owe our lives to God. It’s accurate insight, the ability to avoid thinking we are that which we are not. There’s this odd idea floating around – we all seem to share it to some degree or another – that we’re all fine just the way we are. People claim that they’re kind and good, basically salt-of-the-earth, and if there are problems in the world it must be other people causing the ruckus. It reminds me of the time that G.K. Chesterton, in response to the question, “What’s wrong with the world,” fessed up and said, “It’s me.” The problem is me. I sin. If, in my pride, I convince myself I haven’t contributed to the issues that swirl and plague the world, my perspective is probably skewed to the point of being totally inaccurate. It’s a narrow worldview which misses a lot of self-knowledge.

Humility has the opposite effect. It enlarges. It is true self-knowledge. Humility doesn’t make us less than we are. It isn’t false modesty, a form of ah-shucks low self-esteem, self-pity, or a habit of negativity. The more humble you are, the more comfortable and grateful you’ll be with exactly who you are, knowing the good and willing to work on the bad.

So what’s the honest, humble truth? We are flawed. We are messy. We senselessly curate feuds with people and harbor misunderstandings in order to feel important. We harbor all manner of mistaken ideas about ourselves and our abilities. We do and say arrogant, presumptive things.

It’s also true that, in spite of this, God loves us dearly, and what does it mean to be loved by God other than to be gifted the participation of his glory?

This is why I say humility is a funny thing. It begins with the earth and ends in the heavens. But the goal itself isn’t fixated on Heaven for the reason that we deserve Heaven, or like the idea of it (eating icecream forever and never gaining weight, or whatever). The goal of humility is love. To make ourselves small so that God might be magnified.

“My soul shall magnify the Lord,” says Our Lady before proclaiming that God lifts up the humble. Humility, which goes out on behalf of magnifying God, returns to us as heroic transformation. It throws itself on God’s mercy not because we are so worthless but, as our Mass oration makes clear, so that we might run towards the promise. That verb in the prayer, currentes in Latin, meaning to run or make haste, that’s not the action of a mediocre person, or someone who isn’t loved. That’s the action of someone who has forgotten about himself and is actively seeking God alone.

Humility is the condition for transformation. To quote St. Edith Stein one more time, “When we are reduced to nothingness in the highest degree of humility, then the spiritual union of the soul with God takes place.”

We bury ourselves in humility, disappear to self, knowing that we are shaped of clay, and in the earthy tomb we meet Our Lord. We die with him and in so doing hasten to the promise. It seems to me that we’re well aware of what must be given up in order to follow Christ. Do we know what we’ve gained?

To You I lift up my soul, O Lord.