The higher, the lower

A LATIN adage says it all: “Corruptio optimi pessima.” The corruption of the best is the worst of all!

May we never forget the truth of this saying. We should be extra wary when in our journey in life, we, by a confluence of several factors, attain positions of power and prestige. That’s when we really have to be most careful and try our best to grow in humility, doing all that humility would require of us.

This sobering truth is behind the warnings and lessons embedded in many stories, both religious and secular. To cite a few, we can mention the following:

- The story of the race between the hare and the tortoise. From the Wikipedia, we have the gist:

A hare one day ridiculed a slow-moving tortoise. In response, the tortoise challenged his swift mocker to a race. The hare soon left the tortoise far behind and, confident of winning, he decided to take a nap midway through the course.

When he awoke, he found that his competitor, crawling slowly but steadily, had already won the race.

- From the Gospel of St. John, we have the story of the blind man cured by Jesus and causing unbelief among the Pharisees. The story concludes with Jesus saying:

“For judgment I am come into this world, that they who see not, may see, and they who see, may become blind.”

“And some of the Pharisees, who were with him, heard, and they said to him: Are we also blind?

“Jesus said to them: If you were blind, you should not have sin. But now you say, we see, your sin remains.” (9,39-41)

- We are, of course, familiar with St. Paul’s words: “The foolish things of the world has God chosen, that he may confound the wise. The weak things of the world has God chosen that he may confound the strong.” (1 Cor 1,27)

- Still another Gospel story, from St. Matthew: “When an unclean spirit is gone out of a man he walks through dry places seeking rest, and finds none. Then he says: I will return into my house from where I came out. And coming he finds it empty, swept and garnished.

“Then he goes, and takes with him seven mother spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there. And the last state of that man is made worse than the first…” (12,43-45)

These, and many more, simply tell us one common lesson—we always need to be more humble the higher we get in any aspect of our life. Greater humility means having greater trust in God and less in ourselves, having bigger recourse to the help of others than depending solely on our powers, etc.

The more we lead, the more we should follow. The more free we are, the more obedient we should be. The greater honor and power given to us, the more willing we ought to be to serve others.

Remember when Christ washed the feet of the apostles at the Last Supper. St. Peter could not take it, and at first refused to be washed. Our Lord insisted, saying that what he was doing was meant to be an example to be followed by them.

This Christian truth applies to all, but most especially to members of the clergy who possess a special dignity. Priests and bishops should be the first ones to take extreme care of their spiritual lives before they can dare to take care of the spiritual lives of others.

It is undeniable that precisely because of their—our--position and exposure to things, the clergy are subject to the most vicious and subtle evil that can ever visit man. The devil works hardest on those who are closest to God or to the divine things.

For this, they—we—should be the first to avail ourselves of confession and spiritual direction before we dare to dispense these means of sanctification on others. It would really be funny if all that preaching and counseling we do, often with bombast and bluster, is not supported by a solid personal spiritual life.

This would certainly require a deepening and constantly-frontier-breaking kind of humility on the part of the clergy. Without this, forget it—all would be a sham, a hypocrisy, deserving of being branded by Christ himself as frauds, whitewashed sepulchers, serpents, etc.