Humility of Instruments

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.

“But when you are invited, go and recline in the last place, so that when he who invited you comes in, he may say to you, ‘Friend, go up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who are at table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14:10-11).

There are many times in the Gospel when Our Lord speaks about the virtue of humility to emphasize to us the importance of that virtue. It’s the basis of many other virtues, the virtue whereby we recognize the truth about ourselves.

Humility is truth, the virtue whereby we empty ourselves of ourselves, of our love of self, which is often the biggest problem in the whole of our spiritual life. Our love of self, which is pride. We put ourselves before so many other things.

The battle for holiness is a continuous battle against the love of self. Our Lord Himself gives us a great example of 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).

Our Lord didn't just become a man. He became a baby—the smallest possible, defenseless person He could be.

And every Christmas, we come to focus a little more on that baby in Bethlehem, so that throughout the course of our life, we might relearn the lessons of humility that Jesus wants to teach us.

In our prayer this morning, we could ask Our Lord that we might open our eyes to that truth. Come to see our smallness. “I am nothing, I have nothing, I can do nothing” (cf. Josemaría Escrivá, Friends of God, Point 215).

Every year on Ash Wednesday, the Church reminds us with the ceremony of the ashes, “You are dust and to dust you shall return” (Gen. 3:19).

This is the opposite of the temptation that the devil gave to Eve: “Your eyes will be open, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (cf. Gen. 3:5). He tries to lift her up, to swell her up to be like God.

That's what our pride does to us. We think we know many things. We think we are good at this and that.

We think that all the talents we have are due to our own abilities, whereas St. Paul says to us, “What have you that you have not received?” (1 Cor. 4:7).

Humility is the awareness of all those things that we have received—the gifts. And that's why humble souls are grateful souls.

It leads us to acts of thanksgiving, “to thank God for everything, because everything is good” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 268), because He has blessed us in so many ways.

We are told in the Preface of the Mass, “We do well always and everywhere to give you thanks.” Because that's the recognition that I have nothing. I can do nothing. I need your help and your graces for every single little thing I do.

“Humility is truth” (St. Teresa of Ávila, The Collected Works). When we try to grow in that virtue of humility, it fosters many other virtues also.

Sincerity. Because I know I am nothing, therefore I go, and I tell everything that I need to say in the chat or in Confession. I get out all the garbage. I'm not surprised or scandalized by my own miseries, or my own sins.

By getting all of that out, then God can fill me with His graces. It helps us to be more docile. When I'm humble, I realize I need to learn many things. I don't know many things.

I thought I knew a lot, but now I realize I don't know anything. I need to learn from the things people tell me, from other people's examples, from so many other good things that God has placed around me.

I'm grateful for what I learned. When we’re docile, we're able to be molded. There's a phrase in the Old Testament that says, “Like clay in the hands of the potter.” Sicut lutum in manu figuli–Like clay in the hands of the potter (Jer. 18:6).

I saw a potter at work once, and he had this sort of spinning table that went around. There was a lump of clay in the middle, and then he poured a bit of water onto the clay, and then he began to put a finger here and a thumb there.

As the table went around a little bit, it was spinning. He was little by little molding it into a cup, or a saucer, or a jug there in front of your eyes.

He poured a little bit more water on it to keep it moist. Little by little, this lump of clay turned into something very useful.

Our Lord in Scripture is telling us that we have to be like that modeling clay, so that God, through the work of the Holy Spirit, can mold us to be the person, the instrument, that He wants us to be.

St. Josemaría liked to say, “We are instruments in the hands of the artist” (J. Escrivá, Christ Is Passing By, Points 1, 120; The Way, Points 612, 617; The Forge, Points 607, 613). It's a very useful phrase: instruments.

God has created us, formed us, placed us, exposed certain experiences, people, places, ideas, to mold us to be the person that He wants us to be, to fulfill a mission.

Humility has a purpose. He's molding us all the time. Everything has its influence on us.

We see the Holy Spirit in the things that we hear, that we listen, that we see. It opens up a whole new outlook on life for us—humility to be docile, able to be molded.

The opposite of this would be if the modeling clay was very dry and could not be molded—arid, stiff, and difficult to mold in any way. Even if it's very stiff and you try and mold it, it might break.

Humility allows us to change, to grow in different directions, to change our way of doing things, change our way of thinking. To be that other person that God wants us to be.

Humility helps us to grow in the virtue of obedience because the virtue of obedience means we subject our will to the will of another. And that, over time, can be very heroic: to subject our will to the will of another.

Yet Our Lord also tells us with His words, with His actions, that that's very important. “He became obedient to Mary and Joseph” (Luke 2:51). He subjected Himself completely.

He wants us to do the same thing. If we're very strong-willed or full of our own ideas, or we know what's right, or we know everything, or that's how I learned this in school or someplace, we might find it difficult to obey, to just do what we're asked to do.

St. Josemaría said, “In Opus Dei, the most important thing we do is to obey.” It's a very important thing.

Try and keep at the back of your mind the importance of that virtue. It can make a big difference to do what we're asked.

Sometimes it might seem like a very small thing. I heard somebody say once about a person who had not persevered in their vocation: “They did not do what they were told.” It's a very simple thing, but it's a very important thing.

There might be a moment in our lives when doing what we're told can make a difference between life and death. Just to do what we're told, to do what we're asked.

And to do what we're told when maybe we don't feel one bit like doing what we're told, when we think the opposite is the right thing—that's when our humility counts.

At that moment, to be able to be molded, to listen carefully, to say, ‘I have to try and do what the Holy Spirit is telling me to do, not what my own will, or my idea, or my own experience may be telling me.’

Humility leads us to be cheerful because nothing can bring us down. We laugh at ourselves, we laugh at life, we laugh at the world.

We're cheerful and happy because we're on the right track. We know where we're going. We know where we've come from.

Humility leads us to have a deep spirit of service. I've come to serve. I find my fulfillment in serving—my joy—because Christ “came not to be served, but to serve” (Matt. 20:28).

The whole of our education and the whole of our formation has the goal of leading us to serve a little more and to serve a little better and to improve the quality of our service as a way that we practice the virtue of humility.

Humility is a product of temperance. We modify our sense of our worth because we all tend to think that ‘I am very important’ or ‘I'm very valuable’ or ‘I'm very good at this, or very good at that.’

St. Josemaría liked to say that one of the greatest businesses in the world would be to buy people for what they're really worth and to sell them for what they think they're worth. We all think we're worth much more than we are.

Temperance helps us to moderate the sense of our own worth, and that's humility. It's superior to all the moral virtues because by it we know the truth about ourselves.

Sometimes we need to be told the truth. In the chat, in Confession, or in fraternal correction, people tell us the truth about ourselves. It's a wonderful thing in our supernatural family.

People don't talk behind our backs or don't whisper, murmur about us, about all the truth. The truth is said to our faces. ‘You're like this’ or ‘You need to improve in that’ or ‘This thing was not done right.’

That's a wonderful thing. That means we can have great peace and confidence in family life. If I do something wrong, I'll be told.

If I start to swing out of the chandelier, somebody will tell me, ‘Look, we shouldn't swing out of the chandelier because we might break the lights, or the roof might come in or something.’

We relax and we have fun, and the sky's the limit because we know if there's something wrong, I will be told.

If through this virtue we see that all that we do is nothing compared to what God does, then it leads us to want to make the glory of God the motive of all our actions.

Lord, help me to give you glory today. Lift up my heart and soul to you in my work, in the perfection with which I try to do it, in finishing things well, in taking care of details, in being punctual, ordered, or in listening to the indications that I receive.

Give you glory! Glory to you, not glory to me, because sometimes our pride can lead us to think that everything we do is wonderful.

When we polish a floor, we can look back at the floor and say, ‘Oh, my goodness, look at how wonderful that floor is, now that I have polished it.’

Or we can pick up a little paper clip off the floor and say, ‘Now that floor looks much, much better that I've picked up this paper clip.’ Maybe somebody else has done the polishing, and all we've done is pick up a paper clip.

The same thing about laying a table, or baking a cake, or doing laundry—we look back at our work and see what a great job we've done, pat ourselves on the back. We're very good at giving ourselves the glory.

We should try and make the glory of God the motive for our actions. Our Lord said, “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart” (Matt. 11:29).

He places this virtue as one of the virtues that we should imitate in a special way.

Fulton Sheen likes to say that when there's a play in a theater, when the curtain goes down at the end of the play, it doesn't really matter who played the part of the queen and who played the part of the servant (Fulton J. Sheen, The Cries of Jesus from the Cross).

What matters is how they played their part. Sometimes in the Oscars, it's the supporting role that gets the Oscar.

The important thing is not the role we play, it’s how we play our role because God sees everything.

Our humble service and carrying out of the duties we've been given—that's what God is looking at.

There may be a whole pile of things in the work that we do that other people don't see, or maybe they'll never see, because somebody isn't watching 24/7.

But little details that we put into our work—details of love, of care, of professionalism, the beauty of the little details that we can offer to God, unseen by man but seen by Him.

When we look at this virtue, we can be reminded that all the great people of the world, perhaps people who get a lot of publicity (Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden, the Queen of England, Eliud Kipchoge, all the important athletes we may hear all about), ultimately all these people who grab the headlines, they're all dust.

And one day they'll go back to being dust (Gen. 3:19).

One of the great things we have and that God has given to us is the knowledge that we are dust. There may be many people in the world that don't know or don't realize that they're dust. That's the reality.

We try to learn from Our Lord who is “meek and humble of heart” (Matt. 11:29).

I got a call from a lady once who asked me if I was the priest who gave talks about garbage and envelopes. I wanted to put the phone down. I thought it was a joke or something.

I said, “I'm sorry, I don't think I gave a talk about garbage in my life, and ‘envelopes’ doesn't give too much scope.”

She said, “But I heard your name in connection with garbage and envelopes.” She really insisted.

Then when she really pushed, I remembered the story then about St. Josemaría who was on a plane one time and there was a lady on the plane who had converted, having read Friends of God.

She came to him and said, “Father, I want to thank you because, having read your homilies, I discovered the one true faith and I converted to Catholicism.”

He said, “My daughter, when you read a message in an envelope, you read the message and you throw the envelope away. I am just the envelope.”

The lady said, “That’s it, garbage and envelopes!”

St. Josemaría, in his profound humility, talked about himself as just an envelope, the means that God has used to give us this great message of the spirit of Opus Dei. He said, “I hope God won't throw me away.”

We're just envelopes. Envelopes that God has used to bring beautiful things into the lives and hearts of many other people. Envelopes in our apostolate. Instruments that God is using to produce something beautiful in the world.

We're told how “the instrument is always in the hands of the artist.” A very beautiful phrase of our Father: “The instrument is always in the hands of the artist” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 613).

The painter keeps the paintbrush in His hands and so, the paintbrush is always in His hands.

We have to be paintbrushes, and let the Divine Painter do His work. This masterstroke here, this masterstroke there.

If the paintbrush says, ‘No, I don't like that color, I don't like that purple, let's do a magenta. Or a pink or something.’ Or ‘Let's not paint this thing this way, let's paint it that way.’

If the paintbrush begins to be rigid in the hands of the artist and doesn't allow itself to be guided to perform the master strokes, then the paintbrush becomes useless. Stiff, rigid, proud. Knowing better than the master painter.

My job is to be a paintbrush—to leave myself in the hands of the Divine Painter, so that He can paint the marvelous strokes that He wants. Brush strokes that produce a masterpiece.

God wants to use each one of us to produce that masterpiece, but a lot of that depends on our humility.

In His birth, Our Lord surrounds Himself with humility. The humility of Our Lady. The humility of St. Joseph. The humility of the shepherds, of the Magi. Everything in Bethlehem speaks to us about humility. Very powerful (Luke 2:8-20, Matt. 1:18–2:12).

As we grow in life, we have to give more importance to this virtue, because as we come to know more things, we can find I can work a lot of things out for myself. We can see great importance being given to reason.

But all the time this virtue leads us to subject our reason to the reason of God, to His authority, so that we don't get a swollen head.

The divine mysteries can't be grasped by human minds. We need to subject our minds.

Our faith is a faith of mysteries. The fact that something can't be understood doesn't mean that it's not true. Often, we need to trust in God, to trust in His graces like little children.

“Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3).

Little children are humble because they know they can't do anything. They know they're not big. They know they have to rely on their parents for everything that they need. They know their weaknesses.

Lord, help me to know my weaknesses. Help me to know my faults.

A good question to ask sometimes in the chat is, ‘What do you think is my greatest fault? What do I need to work on? Where do I need to empty myself of my self-love?’

The chat and the Confession that we have each week are great opportunities for humility. To grow in this virtue. To let ourselves be known. To talk about our weaknesses and our faults, or all our mistakes, or all the crazy ideas that may have passed through our minds.

On the wall of a hospital in New York, there was written a prayer that said,

I asked God for strength, that I might achieve.
I was made weak so that I might learn humbly to obey.
I asked for health so that I might do great things.
I was given infirmity, that I might do greater things.
I asked for riches so that I might be happy.
I was given poverty, that I might be wise.
I asked for power, that I might have the praise of men.
I was given weakness, that I might feel the need of God.
I asked for all things, that I might enjoy in life.
I was given life so that I might enjoy all things.
I got nothing I asked for—but everything I hoped for.
Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.
I am, among all men, most richly blessed.
(Prayer of an Unknown Confederate Soldier)

Humility leads us to see the gifts that God has given to us and to thank Him for them because they're all wonderful things.

The big enemy of that humility is pride. If you try and see how our pride manifests itself, fast temper is fast pride.

There are moments when we have to stand on our pride, our anger, our envy or jealousy, or all the ugly things that come out of the human heart so that we come back humbly to God and realize that on our own we can do nothing.

We will have to rely completely on Him, and that means that we become aware of our weaknesses.

There's a point in The Way that says, “When you hear your success being applauded, let there also sound in your ears the laughter you provoked with your failures” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 589).

When we get the temptation to think ‘what a clever person I am,’ or ‘what a great job I've done,’ or all sorts of other things, just remember all the times in our life when we were the laughingstock, when the joke was on us, when we turned out to be silly or did a crazy thing.

It brings us back to earth; helps us to keep our feet on the ground.

We're humble when we fulfill our duty, and when we do it even when we don't feel like it. We conquer our feelings. ‘This is what I've been asked to do. This is my duty today.’

‘Help me to be that instrument in the hands of the artist, ready to do whatever it is that I'm asked to do.’

When it comes to Christmas, we look in on the crib once again to relearn all these lessons: that Christ became small. Mary also gave herself completely in all the things she was asked to do.

Pope John Paul II, when he was speaking one Christmas day in Rome, gave lofty words of wisdom to the United Nations in New York. Greetings of peace.

Then when he'd finished that, he said, Now we turn our attention from the Assembly Hall of the United Nations in New York to the great things of man, with all their glitter and their glamour and their razzmatazz and their noise, to the great things of God.

We turn our attention from the United Nations Hall in New York to a small stable in Bethlehem, which is quiet, silent, passes unnoticed.

That's the way that the great things of God happen.

We have to seek our pathway there, hiding away and disappearing, serving in quietness and silence, like Our Lady, like St. Joseph, like Bethlehem, fully aware of our nothingness.

You see, if you go and get a garbage can or a dustbin and you paint it a nice color, maybe white with pink spots, and you put a nice bow around it and really dress it up in a very special way, and then you bring somebody to it and wonder if they can guess what it is, ‘Well,’ they'll say, ‘you don't fool me.’

‘You can paint it any color you like, you can put all sorts of beautiful bows around it, but it's very difficult to disguise a garbage can or a dustbin. I can immediately recognize it as a dustbin.’

That’s what each one of us is. Our Lord wants us to recognize that so that we grow in this virtue.

At the same time, humility means recognizing our talents. I have an ability to do this. And you see, God has given us five talents. “Some he gave five to, some three, and some, one” (Matt. 25:15).

Everyone in Opus Dei has five talents; otherwise, we wouldn't be here. None of us can say, ‘I wasn't there when they were given out the talents.’ We all have talents.

Part of humility is to discover our talents. What am I good at? What does God want to give me the grace to do well? Try and foster that. Get better at it, because God wants us to give Him glory with that talent.

That's a very key idea of St. Josemaría’s. It's one of the ways he has encouraged women all over the world to fulfill themselves to the full.

We have to struggle to be better, to be the best we can be, in the particular talent that God has given to us.

If we can break the record for the marathon, the first lady in the world to break the record of the marathon, then we should be trying to do it, or to win some London marathon or something.

Or to bake the best cake that's ever been baked in the world, or to polish the best products that are floored, or some other talent that God has given to us, or to speak Russian or Japanese, whatever it may be.

We want to try and acquire that talent as best we can. That's humility.

But realizing that God has given me the grace to do all these things, and therefore I give Him all the glory.

Our Father's statue is now on the walls of St. Peter's. Very interesting little detail. And yet our Father was all the time during his life emphasizing humility, and growing in that virtue, realizing he was nothing.

And now he's carved in stone, on the walls of St. Peter's. It's the way to go.

“He who exalts himself shall be humbled, and he who humbles himself shall be exalted” (Matt. 23:12).

Our Lord has a special affection for those who are humble. We're humble when we let ourselves be formed, when we want to be formed.

We're happy to learn new things or place ourselves in situations, when we go to our recollection, or our Circle, or our chat, or our retreat, or our annual course, with that desire to learn, because there's always something new to learn.

We're open to learning new things—that's humility.

Pride leads us to think we know it all already, but some things we have to learn, and some things we have to relearn. There are some things we think we may have understood and got well, but maybe we've only touched them on the surface.

In the course of our life, Our Lord will lead us into a deeper understanding of those ideas. So, our work of formation is a work of always.

Humility means we learn to accept the will of God as it comes, that there's something good behind this thing. God's providence is working itself out.

We can be cheerful, happy, peaceful, and serene because we know that God is fulfilling things. This is His will.

Sometimes we have to be humble enough to accept the will of God when it costs, when there's a cross, maybe humbly accepting the indications that may be given to us.

We thought perhaps that I did a good job on this occasion, but maybe our supervisors come along and say, ‘No, this could have been much better if you do it this way’ or ‘Please do it again.’

Sometimes things don't work out the first time, and they don't work out the second time, Often, they work out the third time. Sometimes we have to be ready to do the job again, to do a better job, to improve what we've done, to have the humility to try again, because often things turn out much better the second or third time.

We can ask Our Lady, that she might help us to grow in this work. She who listens very carefully to the voice of the Holy Spirit: go here, go there, go to Bethlehem, go to Egypt, stay there, come back.

Mary, may we imitate your profound humility.

“He has looked upon the lowliness of his handmaid. Henceforth all nations will call me blessed” (Luke 1:48).

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.

MVF