One of my most ardent hopes is that any talk about humility should not be interpreted as purely religious, pious chatter that hardly has anything to do with the nitty-gritty of real, daily life.
I feel that would be an unfair attitude to take. Humility is a real, indispensable virtue if we are interested to grow and develop properly as men and women, as persons, and ultimately as children of God.
Humility is a conditio sine qua non in our life, both personal and social. That’s what our mind and heart need if we want to stay in touch with reality, the one proper to us. Pride, its opposite, distorts reality. It can even detach us from reality.
Thing is very often we fail to immediately realize that our own mind and heart are already playing tricks with us. We don’t realize that we are already falling into our own deception. We even become willing victims.
Pride has that notorious ability to blind and desensitize us, confining reality to what is mine and here and now, what is material, etc. It certainly prevents us from entering into the spiritual and supernatural reality.
If pride can be very vicious in the personal level, it is more so—I would say, it approaches the demonic degree—in our social life. Its grip on us can be permanently strong if nothing or hardly anything is done to overcome it by developing its opposite virtue—humility.
That’s the reason we have to vigorously foster humility not only in the personal level, but also and more so in the social and national level. The root of the problems we have as a country is the lack of humility in our collective, national life.
The Bible warns us: “Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity.” (Ecc 1,2) In many parts of God’s revelation as contained in the Scripture, this warning can be found, often in vivid language.
We cannot overemphasize the importance of humility, because near the core of our heart in our own wounded state is the principle of pride. We need to have a conscious, deliberate and constant effort to grow in humility. It’s a duty, an obligation. It’s not optional.
In this effort, we can not be complacent. An all-out vigilance should be made. The goal to reach is that while we can take legitimate pride in our accomplishments, we should always feel the urge to have another conversion.
This is because repentance and conversion, the eagerness to change for the better, to be closer to God and everything his will asks of us, is the engine of our personal growth to maturity and our social development.
And repentance, conversion depend on humility. They actually influence and feed on each other. Unless this is understood, I don’t think we can go far in our quest for maturity and development.
For this, we can do endless things. There’s one prayer that can be helpful in this regard. It’s called the Litany of Humility by Cardinal Merry del Val. It gives us ideas of what humility involves. It goes:
“Jesus! Meek and humble of heart, Hear me. / From the desire of being esteemed, Deliver me Jesus / From the desire of being loved,… / From the desire of being extolled,… / From the desire of being honored,… /
“From the desire of being praised,… / From the desire of being preferred to others,… / From the desire of being consulted,… / From the desire of being approved,… / From the fear of being humiliated,… /
“From the fear of being despised,… / From the fear of being forgotten,… / From the fear of being wronged,… / From the fear of being suspected,… /
“That others may be loved more than I, Jesus grant me the grace to desire it. / That others may be esteemed more than I,… /
It goes on and on, tracing the points where humility can be developed. Sad to say, these points appear like an aberration to the modern mind, showing us how far we are from humility.
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