The endless quest for humility

Oh, what a slippery virtue humility is! It's hard to keep it in one's grip without pride spoiling it precisely by making use of it. The most insidious and devious type of pride is when one takes pride in his humility, righteousness and holiness. That's when pride becomes almost invincible.

When one finds it hard to understand and pray for others, to be considerate and magnanimous, these are signs of the absence of humility. When one thinks in an abiding way to be superior to others, when he is quick to judge others and to regard his criteria, standards and opinions to be the only ones that matter, for sure humility is practically dead.

When he does not feel superior, he is usually taken over by envy and anxiety. Insecurity creeps in, and joy and peace just flee. Thus, he likes to feed his superiority by indulging in selfies and other forms of self-assertion, both open and hidden, aggressive and subtle, even to the point of using reverse psychology.

When one seems to see only the weaknesses, mistakes and failures of others with hardly any notice or just quiet on their accomplishments, you can be sure pride is lording it over him. He may be well-mannered from a distance, but when he starts to speak, the words betray what's really inside his mind and heart.

He is prone to gossip, unable to control himself. He, of course, will try to make himself look good and fair. He may even admit to some shortcomings of his own but only to strike a bigger blow on others. It's actually a terrible, dirty world, this world of gossip.

He is usually hard to be with. And if he looks like he's being sociable, you can readily see the artificiality of it all. And most of the time, he only talks about his own self, about his own interests. He hardly listens to others. He just listens to himself.

I have met all kinds of people but there's hardly anything more depressing than to talk with someone so enclosed in his own world that no reminder, suggestion and correction from outside can enter. Only his ideas and ways make sense. Those of others don't. The proud person is agonizingly blind.

This reminds me of what St. Peter once said in his letter. "God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble." A proud person cannot be a man of God. C.S. Lewis expressed it well when he said:

"As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down you cannot see something that is above you."

The scourge of pride usually afflicts people of more or less high status intellectually or in some other aspects like talents, power, fame and fortune in life. It can afflict persons even in a more grievous way in the religious and ecclesiastical circles.

In fact, I have come to believe after many years of experience that they-we, including myself-are the most vulnerable ones. This, of course, is not surprising since the higher one gets in his status, the bigger also would be the temptations, and the more painful would be the fall when he falls.

But to be sure, not everything is lost. There is always hope. And the more challenging the problem and predicament are, we can also get a greater grace. St. Paul said it: "Where sin abounded, grace did abound more." (Rom 5,20)

It is just a matter at focusing our life on God, entirely conforming our mind and heart on Christ, on his word and example. We just have to develop the proper attitudes and virtues. We have to be open-minded, always thankful, mindful always that everything good comes from God.

The bad things should neither take us away from God, but rather should spur us to go even more closely to him, convinced that Christ has redeemed us, converting our sinfulness into the very way of our own salvation through the cross.

We need to follow Christ's command closely to love one another as he himself has loved us. For this, we cannot help but have to deny ourselves and to carry the cross in any form it comes, as he himself clearly said.

Let's develop the attitude of doing what we have to do yet passing unnoticed, always eager to serve and not to be served. And as St. Paul said, "in humility, let each esteem others better than themselves." (Phil 2,3)

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