Glory in humility

WE need to know how to live in glory without compromising our humility, and vice-versa, how to live in humility without undercutting the glory proper to us as persons and children of God.

            Yes, we need to distinguish between proper and improper sense of personal glory, and between true and false, or healthy and sick humility.

            Our life is not supposed to be a life meant for suffering alone, hounded always by difficulties, problems, anguish, though these, given our condition now, are also unavoidable. It is meant to be a happy life, verified universally by our undeniable innate desire for joy.

            And this is because as image and likeness of God, as children of his, as persons with the capacity to know and to love, we are meant to live our life with God who is all goodness, all love and mercy, omniscient and omnipotent. We cannot help but move toward this ideal.

            These truths are the basis for our glorying in humility. Glory and humility need to go together, because our glory is a participation, a reflection of the glory of God. And such objective order of things requires a healthy humility that is not just a nihilist kind of self-denial, but a self-denial that allows God to enter into our life.

            St. Paul tells it to us directly: “He that glories, let him glory in the Lord.” (2 Cor 10,17) The same idea is echoed in a prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours: “The wise man must not glory in his wisdom, nor the strong man in his strength, nor the rich man in his riches. Rather, let him who glories glory in the Lord by seeking him and doing what is right and just.”

            As to the basis of our need for humility, again St. Paul tells us: “What do you have that you have not received? And if you have received, why do you glory as if you have not received it?” (1 Cor 4,7)

            All those exhortations about humility, about self-denial, about having to pass unnoticed, etc., are not meant to plunge us into darkness and a joyless life. They are not meant for us to simply drift in passivity, or to sink in fear or despair. They are meant to give us the glory proper to us. They are meant to make us truly happy, active, liberated.

            These exhortations are made in view of our wounded condition due to the effects of sin. Truth is with our sinfulness we tend to think our glory and joy are produced and sustained by our own efforts alone, or our own natural endowments. This is nothing other than vainglory. It’s an illusion, a false, mistaken understanding of our own selves.

            To be humble is never meant to make us assume a passive attitude toward life. That it is sometimes associated with shyness, with signs of an inferiority complex means that authentic humility also has its own share of weeds that look like the real plant but are actually a pest.

            If we are to consider the life of Christ and the saints who were all humble, we can clearly see that humility is always marked with glory, joy and an active attitude toward life. St. Paul even went to the extent of saying: “Be imitators of me as I am of Christ.” (1 Cor 4,16)

            It would be good that we get a global picture of our life as presented to us by our Christian faith so that we would understand the relation between glory and humility as we go through the different events of our life.

            Let’s have a Christian sense of our beginnings which gives us the fundamentals of our dignity. Then let’s cultivate a Christian sense of our history and end that involves the redemptive work of Christ so that we would know how this relation between glory and humility can be lived as we tackle the consequences of our sinfulness.

            This is how we can echo those humanly intriguing statements of St. Paul who said: “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world.” (Gal 6,14)

            It’s time that we do away with the idea that glory and humility are antithetical to each other, that is, that glory has nothing to do with humility, and that humility neither has anything to do with glory.

            They always work hand in hand. We have every reason to feel glorious and happy when we are humble, or even humbled.