Humility (Lent)

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

“He who is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whoever exalts himself shall be humbled, and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted” (Matt. 23:11-12).

Our Lord seems to say something that might be the opposite of what you would expect. “He who is greatest among you shall be your servant.” In the world, those who are greatest among us often don't tend to be servants.

It can be the opposite. They “lord it over people” (Matt. 20:25), they govern in high and mighty ways. But the ways of Christ are different.

St. Josemaría liked to say that all professional work is a service. Every time that we do any type of work, we're serving other people. It's very important to have a service orientation. It’s a key to effectiveness.

Our Lord says a very profound thing: “He who is greatest among you shall be your servant.” We should have a desire to serve. Ultimately, Our Lord is talking about the virtue of humility.

At the Last Supper, we're going to see that He stands up from supper and begins to wash the feet of the apostles. They're all a bit surprised. Peter tries to prevent him from washing his feet.

And Our Lord says, “If I do not wash your feet, you can have no part of me. Then Peter says, “Then Lord, not only my feet, but everything” (John 13:3-9).

At the end of this, Our Lord says, “What I have done to you, do you also to others” (John 13:14). Our Lord highlights service as a privilege to serve other people, to make that the goal of our life, and to make that one of the ways that we grow in holiness and practice the virtue of humility.

Then he says, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled.” The tendency in life is to exalt ourselves—part of the problem of original sin. We call this our pride. We think we're better than we are. We think we're greater. We think we're more important. And that gets expressed in all sorts of ways; hence, the importance of the virtue of humility.

One time St. Josemaría was traveling on a plane and there was a lady who recognized him. She had converted to Catholicism after having read some of his homilies. She went to him to thank him.

He said to her, “My daughter, when you receive a message in an envelope, you read the message and you throw the envelope away. I am just the envelope.” In his profound humility, he saw himself as just an instrument that God had used to do good in the world.

The instrument is always in the hands of the artist, and that's what each one of us is. We're just instruments—instruments that God has used, but also instruments that God wants to use more and better.

That's why we have to undergo training. We have to learn certain things. God has placed other people around us to help us to learn, to help us to grow, to help us to be more effective, more professional, more of an expert. We’re all called to be experts in our field of endeavor.

That means that sometimes people have to tell us things. ‘Look, you didn't do such a good job here’ or ‘This could be better there’ or ‘It's better if you do this thing this way rather than that way’ or ‘This is faster’ or ‘This, in the long term, is better.’

We have to hear all these sorts of things in a regular way, because we're learning, we're training. If someone tells us, ‘Look, it's better if you don't do things this way, it's better if you do the other thing’ and if we explode like a volcano, that's sort of exalting ourselves. ‘I know better than this person’ or ‘How dare this person tell me this particular thing!’

We may not explode externally, but we might explode a bit internally. But that can be very informative. We get to know ourselves. What sort of person am I on the inside? Why do I react like this? A fast temper is a fast pride—a refusal to be corrected.

How do I react when I'm told something? We should be able to receive those words with humility and with gratitude, because the person is trying to help us to be better. That's what it's all about.

We will always be learning, all through our life. That's why we always need this virtue—to prevent us from exalting ourselves.

We can also exalt ourselves by thinking that we are better than others: criticism, comparisons, judgments. All these things are the fruit of our exaltation, our pride.

We can ask Our Lord in our prayer this morning that we might learn how to see these aspects of our character. Socrates, a great Greek philosopher, says, “Know thyself.”

It's very good that we learn to identify the expressions of our pride—when we get angry, when we are excessively sensitive about something, when we don't like to be corrected, when we have our mistakes pointed out to us. All these things help us to walk in the truth.

“Humility is truth” (St. Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle). You see, if we were to have an idea of ourselves, and we think we are great, and we think we are very good at this, and we are very good at that—we might be living in an unreal world. We might become a laughing stock because we think we are great at this, that, and the other, and everybody else knows the truth.

One of the aspects of our pride is that our greatest defects are hidden from us. We don't see ourselves as we are. But other people see us very clearly.

A year or two ago I brought a few guys from a certain club to sing for some elderly nuns in Los Angeles. I thought they would like some entertainment, these elderly nuns.

When I got there, I discovered that these guys who thought they were very good singers were not exactly as good as they thought they were. They knew how to play some instruments, they played the piano and guitar, they were very good at the instruments alright. They played Bocelli and various things.

But I'm afraid they sort of thought they were much better than they were. I discovered later that two or three of the very elderly nuns had been trainers of choirs for decades in the Loreto Limuru and in Msongari, and of course, they must have seen immediately that these people could break the windowpanes.

But they were very polite. They didn't say anything. But when I asked a week or two later, ‘Would you like these guys to come and perform again?’ I was told, ‘Next time.’

It's very good that we get an objective opinion about who we are and where we are. In some ways, that's why exams are good things. We all must undergo exams. One of the greatest moments in your life is when you realize, ‘I don't have any more exams.’ It's a great moment. The only thing I need to examine is my conscience.

But exams are not bad things; they're good things because we get an objective assessment of who exactly we are, of the quality of our work, of the quality of the things that we know.

That helps us to keep our feet on the ground, because we could have this very exalted opinion of the work that I do, whereas, in fact, it might be very normal or very ordinary. It helps us to know ourselves and puts us in our place.

If ever we fail an exam, it's not the end of the world. We might have to eat humble pie, which may be very humble and taste very humiliating, but it may be very good for us.

It might be the best thing that ever happened to us. Sometimes we learn an awful lot more from our failures than we do from our successes. We learn how to be more humble. Our Lord says, “Whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”

The pathway to exaltation is through humility. “Though he was by nature God, he did not consider being equal to God a thing to be clung to, but emptied himself, taking the nature of a slave, and being made like unto men, and appearing in the form of man, he humbled himself” (Phil. 2:6-8).

All through Lent, we try to look at different aspects of the life of Our Lord, and in Holy Week also. One of the aspects that the Church places before us continually is His profound humility. Christ “came to serve rather than to be served” (Matt. 20:28).

To give us an example of service, He emptied Himself. Humility is emptying ourselves of ourselves because we all love ourselves too much. That's why we love to stay in bed a little bit longer in the morning.

There's a book that I'm reading at the moment of Cardinal Pell in prison, a fabulous book, but he talks about—there's an Opus Dei custom whereby people try to jump out of bed immediately in the morning.

He said, ‘Personally, I like another five minutes.’ We all like another five minutes, but you see, that's self-love.

Our acts of mortification and penance teach us how to say no to ourselves, no to our self-love, to conquer ourselves, in the very first moment, so that the selfishness that is there inside us—that egoism—doesn't get the better of us.

Therefore, “we walk in the truth” (2 John 4). Because we walk in the truth, we recognize our own smallness. We see our own defects. ‘I'm not good at this, I'm not good at that, I need to improve in something else.’

But also, humility can help us to see that we have certain talents—although, like the singers, it's good to get objective advice.

You may have seen this program on TV for many countries now where Britain's Got Talent or American Idol, or sort of a talent contest, and people go along to test their talent.

Sometimes they have cameras outside the studio to talk to people or to video them as they come out from the audition. Very often they're told very—it might seem cruel—things to their face, but it's the truth. ‘You have the worst voice I've ever heard in my whole life.’

Then you see them coming out of the audition, and they say, ‘That person doesn't know how to recognize talent when they see it.’

You find there's an awful lot of pride in people. They don't know the truth. They don't want to recognize the truth—sort of a stubborn desire to convince everybody how great I am.

But we're all full of that sort of tendency, and so we need people to tell us the truth; sometimes, objective truth. People may tell us, ‘Look, this is your talent, this is an ability you have. You have to develop this. You have to work at it. You have to make it better.’ Like we polish up a diamond to make it shine better.

That's also humility: working at our talents, training, improving, listening to advice, so that we can be shaped to be the best person that we can be., because God wants to use us as His instrument.

The instrument is always in the hands of the artist. We have to be the best instrument we can be, so that we can be more effective.

I got a phone call once in Singapore from a lady who asked me if I was the priest who gave talks about garbage and envelopes. I had to say, ‘I'm afraid I haven't ever given a talk about garbage, and envelopes don't give too much scope.’

I wanted to put down the phone because I thought this was some sort of a crank phone call. She kept insisting: ‘But I heard your name in connection with garbage and envelopes.’ And two or three times she kept on, and, ‘Could you not have some time mentioned something about garbage and envelopes?’

She put me to the pin of my collar, then I remembered that story about St. Josemaría, about “I am just the envelope. You throw the envelope away.”

And she said, ‘That's it, garbage and envelopes.’ You never really know what people are going to take away from some story that you may tell.

We're all just envelopes—envelopes that God has used to bring good news to other people, but we're just instruments. We should try and be a better instrument.

When we try to make sure that there's nothing of ourselves in all of this, and that God is acting in us and through us, then we're able to give Him all the glory. The devil wants us to give all the glory to ourselves, all the glory to me.

If you sweep a floor some time, or you polish a corridor, and you look back at the shine—these last few months I've been coming up the stairs, and I don't know, the stairs here, I don't know what new substance is being used, or who's polishing the stairs, but there's a new shine on that stairway somewhere, somehow—you might look back at the shine on the stairway and say, ‘What a fantastic job I've done. I'm so clever and so talented.’

Or somebody else might have polished their floor or the stairway, and you might have picked up a paper clip. Somebody else has done all the work and you've just picked up the paper clip, and you look back at the stairway and say, ‘How fantastic this stairway looks, now that I've picked up this paper clip.’

We can pat ourselves on the back and take on ourselves all the glory that really belongs to other people, because they've done all the work.

You see, everything we do, whether it's laying a table, or pressing a washing machine button, or ironing some clothes, or polishing a floor, we're able to do it because God has given us the ability to do it. He's given us the strength, the muscles, the arms, the limbs, the know-how, which He hasn't given to other people.

That's why Our Lord invites us not to give some of the glory to God—‘I give you some of this glory, OK, you've done something, OK, but I'm really the one who did all the energy, and all the elbow grease that went into this—no, it’s “all the glory to God, Deo omnis gloria” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 780).

St. Paul says, “What have you that you have not received?” (1 Cor. 4:7). That's a very useful phrase. “What have you that you have not received?”

We have no reason to exalt ourselves; to be full of pride and vanity. We have to be careful then when we look in the mirror or fix our hair, because God gives us the grace to be able to do all of these things. All the glory to Him in all moments.

If we spend an hour in front of the mirror—we can easily be telling ourselves how great we are, how beautiful our hair looks now that we've washed it or shaped it this way or that way. All the glory to God, careful with moments of vanity.

That can lead us to a great spirit of thanksgiving, to thank God for all the good things that He's given us.

“What have you that you have not received?” Thank you, Lord, that I have shoes on my feet, I have clothes on my back, I have shampoo to be able to wash my hair, I have this, I have that, I have a pencil, I have a pen.

So many people don't have these things. I'm able to go to a third-level college to learn new things, to perfect myself. It's all a great gift. We could spend our whole life thanking God. That's the reality, for the good things that He gives us.

When we try to live this virtue of humility, it fosters many other virtues, like sincerity. Sincerity is a virtue whereby we speak the truth. We get out, from inside, all the things, the rubbish, the garbage that may be there.

In the sacrament of Confession, in spiritual direction, with our tutor, our mentor, or maybe our supervisor—we get out the things that are worrying us or concerning us. And that gives us great peace, great joy, great gift of God. It fosters the virtue of docility.

Docility means that we can be taught or are willing to be taught. See, we've come here to learn. We've come here to this center, we've come here to Kibondeni, we've come here to all the classes we go to and all the practicals to learn.

That's what it's all about: to correct other ways or wrong ways we might have of doing things, but to learn new things. Therefore, we have to be open to learn. Then, for everybody who teaches us something, we should be grateful.

Sometimes it's our teachers that teach us something, or sometimes it's our friend. Or sometimes a person you bump into on a matatu, or a guard at the gate, may tell you something, and you realize, ‘That's interesting, that's important.’

Somebody might give you a little tip about this, or a little tip about that. ‘Okay, that helps me to be a little bit better, I learn more things.’

Humility to learn. Openness to learn.

Sometimes we might learn from somebody much smaller than us. Some four-year-old might come along and say something to us that we never imagined.

We might do our hair up in the most fantastic style that we think is absolutely fantastic, and some Standard Four little girl comes along and says, ‘That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen in my whole life.’ Standard Fours have this capacity to talk straight from the hip—at least that's my experience.

Some little kid might tell us something that nobody else dares to tell us. But if we're open to learn from people, because they may be right, they may be true.

Humility helps us to obey, because we submit our will to the will of another. That's what obedience is all about, submitting our will. Sometimes that costs.

You see, Christ submitted His Will. He came to obey. He obeyed His parents in Nazareth. He submitted His Will to the Cross.

Often that can be the most challenging thing we have to do: to obey other people, people who are placed there in a position of authority. We all work under a boss. We all will have a supervisor or a manager someday.

If we're to be good workers, we need to pay a lot of attention to that manager, that supervisor. They’re like the team captain. They call the shots. We’re here to follow. We're a team player.

We might have all the technical knowledge in the world, but if we don't know how to obey, we can't work on the team. We can't work with other people. We can't do what we're told. We have to be dropped from the team.

Humility is a very important part of that. The function of the team is to do what we're told, to do it as we're told. That is important in any organization, in any group of people working together.

I was on a plane once and there was a stewardess who was doing something. Then the leading stewardess asked her to do something else, and this other stewardess, the younger one, said, ‘Well, I thought I would do this other thing first.’

The other stewardess said, ‘No, I want that other thing done now.’ She said the word ‘now’ and I realized it was like a command. ‘This is important. I need you to do now this thing that I'm telling you.’ The other stewardess went off to do what she was told.

It's interesting that on an airline at 30,000 feet, all these little aspects of teamwork become important. The lead stewardess said it within earshot of all the passengers on the plane. It was rather public.

It's important to catch what is being said to us. Sometimes things have to be done now, not just when you feel like it, or when you get the urge, or when you decide that now is the moment. The boss decides now. When somebody says now, they mean now.

This has to be done now—humility to obey in small things; put things back in their place this way; leave the storeroom in a way that other people would like to find it tomorrow.

Humility leads us to be cheerful. Have a smile on your face, because we don't have a care in the world. We leave everything in the hands of God and of others. Therefore, we have no worries. We can be happy.

If on some occasion you are sad or you are down, there’s some bit of pride there. We should go and talk about it.

If it’s something that's on our mind or worrying us, go and find the right person to talk to, and talk to that thing—better that somebody else gets it out. And you may find that that thing that's worrying you—that problem or that sorrow or that pain or that concern—it may be nothing at all.

When we bring something out into the light of another's judgment, they may help us to see, ‘Don't worry, that's not important.’ And you may not have been able to sleep last night about something.

The judgment of others can be very helpful to restore our peace and our serenity, so that we're always cheerful. It's our duty to try and be cheerful for the other people that we work with and live with.

Smile on our face, always. Humility fosters that. And a spirit of service, always. For humbly, we want to serve, want to help. Can I give you a hand? Can I carry this thing for you? I finished my work, can I help you now with your work, so that you also finish a bit faster?

We don't just think of my job and tick the boxes. We look around us and see, How can I help others? We get our own job done first because that's my responsibility. But then once that's done, I see what I can do to help others.

Spirit of service. We don't wait to be asked. Hey, you, can you give a hand here? OK. We were sort of hoping that they wouldn't be asked, or they wouldn't see that we were finished. Or we fiddle around with something to pretend that we're not finished.

Spirit of service means we're proactive. We look around. How can I help more? What can I contribute? There's nothing that makes us more effective than that, aAnd God wants us to be effective.

You see, some day you may be working in a house, or you may be working in a hotel, or you may be working in a restaurant or someplace, or in a home or a school.

That may be very important so that you have your eyes open to see: What else can I do? What can I contribute?

How can I be more effective here? Because that effectiveness is a sign that you're needed. It may be a key to your employment.

You may be able to get somebody else who can do all the material jobs that you can do, but if you have that spirit of being proactive, spotting things that you can do better, then, ‘We'll keep you employed here, because you're an asset to this organization.’

The spirit of service is very important. If you walk into a shop, and the attendant in the shop sort of looks at you, and says, ‘Why have you come into this shop, disturbing my peace?’ And sort of, as though you're a bother in the shop—you feel like turning around and walking out again.

But if the attendant is smiling and saying, ‘How can I help you? What can I do for you?’ That makes a huge difference. That person is effective.

I made a phone call once in Manila to the secretary of a fairly important person, and the person at the other end of the line said, ‘Oh, Father, how can I help you?’

I thought that was a very good question. I don't think I've been asked that too many times on the telephone in my life. When you phone different places: ‘For this, press one; for another one, press two; for another one, press three. I don’t want to talk to you you, don't bother me, just press the numbers when I tell you.’

But this lady says, ‘How can I help you?’ Beautiful. It's a very good phrase to have on your lips sometimes: How can I help you? There may be nothing you can do at all for that person, but hat lady on the other side of the world taught me a lesson, and here I am repeating it. I don't think I've heard that ever on a telephone call.

We teach other people also to have that spirit of service, that service orientation. ‘I am here to help you. It's my joy to help you and to serve you. If you've called me, there must be something that you need, or some piece of information, so how can I help you?’

All this has a basis of humility, and that makes us effective. It makes us good to work with, good to be with. We teach many other people many things.

In some ways, humility is a product of the virtue of temperance, whereby we control, we moderate, the sense of our own worth. If you were to call somebody and somebody says, ‘Oh look, you've just interrupted me with this phone ringing. Why do you call me at this time? I'm painting my nails, or I'm fixing my hair, you're an awful bother.’

If we were to give that message when we open a door or answer a phone call, nobody would feel like calling us again or coming to that particular organization. The moderation of our own self-worth is very important.

These words that the Church places before us in the Gospel today can have a profound influence on our lives. “He who humbles himself will be exalted.”

Our Lady was continually humbling herself. What a model of humility that God has given to us!

“Behold the handmaid of the Lord.” I'm here to serve. “Be it done unto me” (Luke 1:38). Whatever you say, Lord, here's a blank check. The sky's the limit. You can ask me for anything.

As we go towards Holy Week in Calvary, we can ask Our Lady that we might have that same spirit of profound humility that she always had.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

UI