Saint Benedict in his Holy Rule describes humility as various steps that his monks must take to reach a level of humbleness that eventually will lead them to attain exultation in Heaven.The degrees of humility of the Rule can be applied to our daily lives, not only the lives of monks or nuns living in a monastery. The first degree of humility reminds us to remember to always keep in mind the fear of the Lord; the awareness of the presence of God in our everyday lives. Saint Benedict says that we must always remember that God is watching us from Heaven and He sees everything that we do and knows our very thoughts. I don’t know about you, but that sure is a lot of pressure.
So what then should we do in our daily lives? Saint Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body comes to mind, where we embrace a full awareness that we have been created in the image of God. We know that each one of us has a vocation to love one another as children of God, which means that we are all brothers and sisters in Christ. By living our everyday lives striving to love as God loves we become aware of the presence of God. It is then and only then that we can strive towards building one another up instead of tearing each other down.
The next degree of humility requires that there is a relinquishing of the self-will; the letting go of the desire to hold onto control. We know that our culture promotes the message of everything being about “me” and I must do whatever I must do to ensure my happiness, my wants, and my desires. If I have to push others to the side or climb over them to get what I want in life then so be it. Saint Benedict calls on us to be counter-cultural, and to place others before ourselves, dare I say to even do something that is against what I want to do or what I feel the need to do.
We have all been in the situation where we have plans for the day, a day to finally get things accomplished and then that one person comes and seeks our help or requests a favor and our own plans get pushed aside. The little voice; the cloud bubble inside of our head, is saying “I really need to get this done, can’t this person just go away?” but in the spirit of letting go of self-will we fight that desire to just do what we want to do, and we are instead there for another human being. As we go about our daily lives we learn early on that something always comes up just when we sit down to get something done, but we also know that someone will also sacrifice his or her own time for us.
The third and fourth steps of humility have to do with obedience in that we surrender ourselves for the love of God. Saint Benedict speaks of obedience to superiors if we happen to be in a religious community, but he also means to obey the others around us who are our brothers and sisters in Christ, especially those whom we live together with in our own homes. When every fiber of our being is telling us to challenge authority Saint Benedict is telling us to silence that stirring feeling inside and to accept what comes to us. How on earth do we accomplish that though if we are met with cruelty or injustice by those who are in roles of authority? We try our best to maintain our inner peace by offering up what we can to the Lord. When I have been confronted in my life with harsh or wicked treatment from others often I have kept silence, as difficult as it was for me to do so, and I would take it all to the Lord in prayer.
I have offered up much suffering in hope that it would help to sanctify the souls of others, especially the souls of Catholic priests. Our priests are attacked in way that no one else is attacked by Satan because of their power to give us the sacraments, especially the Eucharist and the ability to grant us absolution for our sins. When we offer our suffering as a holocaust for their souls; we offer our suffering for another, I know that there will be a reward for our souls in Heaven because we chose to endure that, which we did not deserve.
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux always comes to mind for me when I think of how she must have felt as she struggled daily with poor treatment from her postulant mistress, and harsh words from the Superior, Mother Mary Gonzaga. She shared in her spiritual writings:
“I can honestly say that, from the moment I entered, suffering opened her arms to me, not only in trials I have already told you about, but in others keener still; and I embraced her lovingly.”
Saint Thérèse endured trials and tribulations patiently and dedicated her religious life “to save souls and above all pray for priests.” If we offer our suffering for others then the burden of bearing our cross becomes much lighter, and with sweet delight we can in humble obedience thank God for uniting us to Christ on His Cross. I find obedience to be the most challenging part of life because so often we encounter individuals who should not be in roles of authority, whether they be in a religious community or in the world. They may be beautiful individuals, but they handle holding power incorrectly, and simply do not illustrate the best versions of themselves when they are an authority figure.
The fifth step of humility involves putting one’s faith and confidence in the Lord in order to maintain a humbled heart. How do we maintain a humbled heart when at times our whole world seems upset? How can we always remember to keep our faith and confidence in the Lord first? The Sacrament of Confession comes to mind when we are able to finally let go of the burdens that we hold in the depth of our hearts and seek forgiveness. We can take our hurt and pain to the confessional, where we can heal by seeking forgiveness for ourselves, but also helping our hearts to become open to forgiving others who have transgressed against us. It is unhealthy to keep burdens inside, and to hold in tears, especially when the tears are the result of how we are treated by another. If someone is doing harm to us; whether it be emotional, psychological, or verbal, we need to know that it is not our fault, and we cannot control the behavior of another.
I remember once listening to a talk by Father Luke Fletcher of the Franciscan Friars and he told us “When you walk out of that confessional you are forgiven, you need to believe you are forgiven. If you don’t believe you are forgiven then you are not putting your faith in God and into the Sacrament.” Saint Benedict could not have his monks walking around carrying all of these burdens because how could they function as a community, if they were holding everything inside and not embracing God’s mercy on them? How can we be productive individuals in society if we are walking around with anger and bitterness, and sin in our hearts?
The sixth step of humility calls us to place ourselves in the “last place” as to increase closeness to God, and the seventh degree of humility is when we put the value of others first, and maintain a humbled state. These two degrees of humility are a little hard to dissect because if we think too much about being humble and have the goal of being the lowly one whether it be in a religious community or maybe within a family or group of friends then we are not actually moving onto the sixth and seventh steps of humility. Saint Benedict stresses that we must feel in our hearts a level of humbleness that is much more than stating in word that we believe that we are more inferior to another or that we have less value. Saint Benedict does not mean that we should walk around feeling as if we are less than a person, but we need to have an awareness that the world does not revolve around us, and we must accept this humbled state. When the world is constantly telling us through the media that we need to rise to the top of the world to gain our reward in life, Saint Benedict argues against what has become such a cultural norm.
Living in the world we have things that are necessities, but we do not need to have the best of everything and should live our lives with simplicity in order to clear our minds and hearts to be filled with the love of God. The things of the world do not give us more value as the children of God? Does God love us any less because we do not have lots of “things?” Pope Francis is a model of humility as when soon after becoming Pope he rejected the Papal car, rode back to Saint Martha’s guesthouse on the bus with other Cardinals, and even went back to pay his hotel bill.
We are called to have a poverty of heart. St. Teresa of Calcutta once said, “The greatest poverty is the poverty of heart.”
The eighth step of humility is the ability to carry out what is “good” for the sake of others. How can we use the Holy Rule of Saint Benedict as a guide to live our lives in the twenty-first century? We can maintain a rhythm of the religious life in the world by praying the official prayer of the church, the Liturgy of the Hours or what we refer to as the Divine Office. When we pray this prayer we are not praying alone because the Divine Office is a prayer that is for all of us. How else can we carry out what is “good” for the sake of others? We can participate in Daily Mass, make a holy hour before the Blessed Sacrament, pray devotions, participate in various ministries and charitable works, etc. We want as Christians to illustrate God’s Love in both our words and deeds.
What use is it, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but he has no works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself. (James 2:14-17)
The next degree of humility requires us to submit to silence in order to be able to listen to others, and the tenth step of humility requires that we do not place ourselves as the center of attention. The eleventh degree of humility calls for us to not place ourselves before others in speech, and the twelfth degree of humility is that we must always remember that God is in one’s center and to remain in a humbled state. I think by his last four degrees of humility; these of which are most interconnected, Saint Benedict is very much trying to drive the message home here by shouting through his silent words, “The world does not revolve around you, get used to it.”! We need to understand that we have imperfections and as sinners we know that God has compassion for us and in turn we need to have compassion for one another by way of mutual obedience.
There will be times that we are not right, and then to be able to accept that in our hearts. And there will be other times when we are right, but in humility we permit another to be right as an act of charity. It is a true tragedy when there is someone who always has to be right and even owns up to such a vice with great pride, but when I have encountered such an individual she taught me something about myself. I am fine with not being “right” even if the other is actually wrong. It is acceptable to let someone else to be “right” because I know the truth lies within my heart. God knows the truth, so externally I do not have to create a disturbance, if I can still have peace in my heart. I often have turned to the quote by Saint John Vianney:
“When St. Aloysius Gonzaga was a student, he never sought to excuse himself when he was reproached with anything; he said what he thought, and troubled himself no further about what others might think; if he was wrong, he was wrong; if he was right, he said to himself, “I have certainly been wrong some other time.” My children, the saints were so completely dead to themselves, that they cared very little whether others agreed with them. People in the world say, “Oh, the saints were simpletons!” Yes, they were simpletons in worldly things; but in the things of God they were very wise. They understood nothing about worldly matters, to be sure, because they thought them of so little importance, that they paid no attention to them.”
Now how can all of this be pieced together to develop a better understanding of humility? Humility is not a quality that one can develop overnight, and is not something that can ever be brought to perfection in a lifetime. It is throughout the lifetime of a monk or nun or the everyday man or woman that one can perform small acts and demonstrate certain behaviors that lead one to not only have more humility, but to also attain a deeper understanding of it. Saint Teresa once said, “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” One must be cautioned though that once our focus becomes on humility then we are no longer increasing in humility and as a result we are shifting the focus back to self. Humility must be attained not on the conscious level, but on a level of which we do not even realize we are moving up the ladder of humility.
Father Benedict Groeschel, the founder of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, believed that we need to set ourselves free from the control of the self and become open to the needs of others and be of service to them as a part of our spiritual journey. An attitude of embracing that everything in life is only about me and adopting certain secular ways and values acts as a constraint or vice that prevents us from climbing the ladder to move up the steps of humility. When we make ourselves the center of our lives, and neglect the needs of others then we push God out of our hearts, minds, and souls.
The virtues of faith, hope, and charity are abandoned and the will of the individual is placed before the Divine Will of God. Saint Benedict understood that the love of Jesus Christ must be present within us in order to serve the Lord, and in order to have Christ at our center we must have the ability to diminish the value of the self. We can learn how to lessen the self by enduring suffering or sharing in the Passion of Christ; sharing His Cross. It is by the acceptance of suffering in our lives that we are able to offer our whole selves for the grace and glory of the Almighty God.
The only means by which to obtain humility is to let go of pride. We need to place love at the center of our lives, which means placing God first and foremost before everything and anyone else. Letting go of pride can be deemed as suffering because it is human nature to have the desire to partake in actions that prevent God from being at the center of oneself. The only means by which we can lessen the self and climb the ladder of humility is by relinquishing control of self-will, which allows one to become more intimate with God and maintain the role of being a follower of Christ in the world. We recall the parable of the rich, young man who desired to follow Christ, but could not bring himself to part with the things of this world; he could not leave everything behind to follow Christ.
We are called to abandon all things connected to the self, so that we can be free to place all of our trust and confidence in Christ alone. We can be witnesses of Christ in the world by living in poverty, chastity, and obedience, which does not only have to be a call for those in religious life. We can live in imitation of Christ too by living in simplicity, having chaste hearts, and by having obedience towards our “superiors” in this world. We can live out these “vows” too, not by taking public vows as those in the religious life, but we can make private “vows” to God within our hearts.
We must always remember that we are not the center of the universe because it is God that is the center of the universe. There are days we need to look at ourselves and firmly say, “I am not God, so therefore I am not in control”! And if we do not remind ourselves I can say with certainty that God will remind us. For me that reminder came one day when I was volunteering at a local food pantry, and there staring at me was a poster on the wall that read, “Relax, God is in control.” It is not easy to relinquish the power to control every aspect of our lives, but it is when we face the reality that God is actually in control that we can reach the conscious state of humbleness in God’s presence. This is the ultimate objective of Christian humility. “Be still, and know that I am God. I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth!” (Psalm 46:10)
