The Seat of Honour

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.

Every day provides a wonderful opportunity to grow in our love for Our Lady. Many Christians all over the world have the custom of honoring Our Lady on Saturdays. She teaches us to foster humility, which is fundamental to our growth in virtue. Mary is the gate through which many of the graces that come from God pass. She is our mother in the order of grace, as the Second Vatican Council has liked to say.

She seasons our good actions, imparting an enhanced value to them. She makes our offering even more acceptable to God, and she grants us the title of possessors of the Divine Heart.

It might even be said that she induces God to be our servant. That’s because God has never been able to resist the supplication of our humble heart.

She is so necessary to our salvation, that Our Lord takes advantage of every opportunity to confer praise and blessings on her. Our Lord tells a story of how he was invited to a banquet, and at the table there were places of greater and lesser honor. The invited guests were no doubt over anxious as to who would get the better seats. And Jesus took notice of their concern.

Perhaps he waited for the conclusion of the meal before leading the conversation to a higher plane. “When you are invited by anyone to a marriage feast,” he said, “do not sit in the place of honor, but when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, go up higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14:8–11).

Our Lord had probably taken the lesser seat at the suggestion of the host. He lived humility. He also noticed the bad manners of the other guests. They were totally mistaken in not giving the best seat to Our Lord. The guests should have been overwhelmed by the presence of Our Lord right there in the room with them.

In the course of our lives, we may often observe a similar phenomenon. Sometimes people can make an enormous effort to be noticed, and remembered, and admired. But little effort is put into being close to God. Today, in our time of prayer, we can ask Our Lady to teach us humility. It’s the only way to grow in love for her son, and to be close to him.

Humility always wins the Divine Heart. In Furrow we’re told, “Because he has looked graciously upon the lowliness of his handmaid” (Luke 1:48). I am more convinced every day that authentic humility is the supernatural basis for all virtues. Talk to Our Lady so that she may train us to walk along that path.

As Our Lady teaches us humility, this virtue should not be thought of as an essentially negative exercise, even though it does involve a denial of one’s pride, a tempering of our ambition, and the extinction of our egoism and vanity. One writer says Our Lady did not experience any of these temptations, and yet was blessed with the highest degree of humility.

If we examine the word humility, we find it’s derived from the Latin word humus, which means earth, or soil, or dirt. Humility signifies the recognition of our human origin, in the dust of which Adam was made. The virtue of humility, therefore, consists in the living out of a realistic appraisal of our comparative insignificance as creatures who are totally dependent on God.

Humility, by inclining us towards earth, recognizes our littleness, our poverty, and in its way, it glorifies the majesty of God.

The interior soul experiences a holy joy in annihilating itself, as it were, before God, in order to recognize practically that he alone is great, and that in comparison with his, all human greatness is empty of truth, like a lie. This self-abnegation in no way impoverishes the soul. It doesn’t limit the legitimate aspirations of the creature.

On the contrary, this virtue works to ennoble the soul, giving it wings on which to explore wider horizons. At the very moment when God chose Our Lady to be his mother, she proclaimed herself to be his handmaid: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord” (Luke 1:38). When Our Lady hears the words of praise from Elizabeth, “Blessed are you among women” (Luke 1:42), she’s actually beginning a time when she will put herself at the service of her cousin. Even though she’s full of grace, Our Lady keeps the secret to herself. Not even Joseph is told the mystery.

Mary leaves it to divine providence to find the opportune moment to enlighten him. She sings for joy of her wondrous blessings. She gives all the glory to God. For her part, she offers up her littleness and her entire consent. She knew nothing of her own dignity. Because of this, in her own eyes, she had not the slightest importance.

One writer says, “She never depended on herself. She depended entirely on God, on his will. Thus, she was able to judge the extent of her own lowliness and to understand her own helpless, but nevertheless, secure condition as a creature, feeling herself incapable of anything and sustained only by the goodness of God.” As a result of this selflessness, she surrendered herself completely to God and lived solely for him.

Mary never sought her own glory, never longed for the best seat at banquets. She never looked for praise on account of her divine motherhood. She lived solely for the glory of God. Humility is grounded in truth, in reality. It’s based on the certitude that creature and creator are separated by an infinite distance.

Once he recognizes how God crosses that gulf for the sake of his beloved creatures, the soul grows in humility and gratitude. The more it is elevated before God, the more does the soul understand and appreciate the vastness of this distance. That’s why Our Lady was so humble.

The handmaid of the Lord is the Queen of the universe. She’s the fulfillment of those words of Jesus, which we find in the gospel, that he who humbles himself will be exalted. One writer says the humble person will hear the invitation of the Lord: “Friend, go up higher” (Luke 14:10). Let us learn how to put ourselves at the service of God without condition. Then we will be elevated to undeserved but incredible heights.

We shall be participating in the intimate life of God. We shall be like gods. Yet our progress will have been along the way of humility and docility to the will of God. Humility leads us to discover that everything we have that is good comes from God, both in the order of nature and in the order of grace. The Psalm says, “Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing in your sight. Every man stands as a mere breath in your sight. Surely man goes about as a shadow, surely for nothing are they in turmoil, man heaps up, and knows not who will gather” (Ps. 39:5–6).

Our contribution is beset by weakness and error. At the same time, humility has nothing at all to do with timidity. The humble soul rests in the hands of God and is filled with joy and thanksgiving as a result. The saints have been magnanimous people. They’ve undertaken impressive tasks for God’s glory.

The humble person is daring, for he counts upon the grace of Almighty God. He prays all the time because he is convinced of his radical dependence on God. He lives in constant gratitude for this help. He seems to have a gift for making friends and doing apostolate. Inasmuch as humility is the foundation for all the virtues, it’s especially the foundation for the virtue of charity.

To the extent that we forget about ourselves, we’ll be concerned with the welfare of others. Saint Francis de Sales has written, “Humility and charity are the principal virtues. They act as mother hens, and the other virtues follow them like little chicks.”

Conversely, pride is the mother and root of every sin, including mortal sin. Pride is the greatest single obstacle to the action of divine grace. Pride and sadness often walk hand in hand. Joy is part of the patrimony of the humble soul. We can keep turning our eyes to Our Lady. No creature ever surrendered herself to the plans of God more humbly than she did. Saint Josemaría in Friends of God said the humility of the handmaid of the Lord is the reason we invoke her as the cause of our joy.

After Eve had sinned through her foolish desire to be equal to God, she hid herself from the Lord and was ashamed. She was sad. By confessing herself the handmaid of the Lord, Our Lady, on the contrary, becomes the mother of the Divine Word, and is filled with joy. May the rejoicing that is hers, the joy of our good mother, spread to all of us, so that with it we may go out to greet our Holy Mother Mary and thus become more like Christ, her son.

The virtue of humility is the foundation and the source of a Christian spiritual life. If we live humility well, then charity and unity follow. Sometimes we may not realize how much Our Lord uses us. He wants us to be instruments in his hands. Humility leads to knowledge, to honesty, to realism, to strength, and also to dedication, to give ourselves to something greater than ourselves.

It helps us to leave the progress of the apostolate in the hands of the Holy Spirit. Our Lord will do great things through us if we are humble. We’re told in Psalm 2, “Ask of me and I will give the nations for your inheritance, the very ends of the earth for your domain” (Ps. 2:8).

The easiest way to save a soul can be through self-forgetfulness. Glory to our self is vain glory. On the ruins of our self-love, God wants to build the castle of our sanctification. We have to watch out that at the back of our mind somewhere, there may be some thought that I am superior. We have to try and convince ourselves that I am nothing. I’m a trash can. But what happens if somebody treats me like a trash can?

In Furrow we’re told not to become alarmed or discouraged to discover that you have failings—and such failings; struggle to uproot them. And as you do so, be convinced that it is even a good thing to be aware of all those weaknesses, for otherwise you would be proud, and pride separates us from God. There are many situations where we can practice the virtue of humility: serving in family life, doing and disappearing, seeking the opinion of others through collegiality.

I heard a phrase once at a diocesan meeting, where somebody said a simple line: a wise administrator never acts alone. We could carve that one in our soul and heart. “A wise administrator never acts alone.” Humility to seek the opinion of others in important things. Sometimes humility is expressed through silence and patience. We’re told in Scripture that Jesus kept silent. Sometimes to feel frustrated can be a grace. It may be God telling us that this is the moment to let go and let God take over.

Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape. We try with humility to accept the things that come to us, like Our Lady said, “Be it done unto me” (Luke 1:38). That virtue leads us to want to obey always, not to want to be an exception or to seek privileges. It means to know how to pass unnoticed.

Saint Benedict said that if humility is truth, then a significant part of its practice must involve bringing out into the daylight of another’s judgment whatever is hidden and therefore subject to delusion. This can be an important encouragement to practice the virtue of sincerity in spiritual direction. Saint John Climacus says humility is the one thing that no devil can imitate. Sometimes we have to have the humility to submit, to accept things that are given to us or asked of us, and to follow and not to insist that I am right and everybody else is wrong.

We don’t submit to a force. We submit to love. Lord, help us to grow in that forgetfulness of self, to know how to take the last positions at the banquet table. The prayer of Saint Ignatius has a perennial relevance: “Teach us, Lord, to serve as you deserve. Serve you as you deserve. To give and not to count the cost. To fight and not to heed the wounds. To toil and not to seek for rest. To labor and not to ask for any reward, save that of knowing that we do your will, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

The humble person asks for God’s help in everything, without getting discouraged in the ascetical struggle, or being surprised at his miseries. Rather, he recognizes them with sincerity, and asks pardon with simplicity, without dramatizing. Convinced of his limitations, he knows how to request help from other people for his own interior life. In spiritual direction, he is docile to the advice received. He tries to learn from and follow the example of the saints.

In Furrow we’re told, “Prayer is the humility of the person who acknowledges his profound wretchedness and the greatness of God. He addresses and adores God as one who expects everything from him and nothing from himself.” The proud person, on the other hand, tends to be self-sufficient. He deceives himself into thinking that he doesn’t need help, and with an even more subtle suggestion: perhaps later, but not now.

Unlike a humble man, he doesn’t rely on God in his actions. Shakespeare says, “Man, proud man, dressed in a little brief authority, like an angry ape, plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven as makes the angels weep.”

Signs of humility are that awareness that we are instruments in God’s hands—inept instruments, with whom God, if we let him, can do great things. In The Way we’re told, “You are but the brush in the hands of the artist, and nothing more.” The brush doesn’t make the decisions about what strokes to make, or what color to use. To be a good paintbrush, it has just to be docile in the hands of the artist. We’re nothing more than a paintbrush, but we are in God’s hands.

That awareness of our humility can lead us not to be shy in moments of apostolate, reaching out to other people. That virtue can lead us to allow ourselves to be demanded from, so that we can be stretched, developed, grown into the person that God has planned us to be.

That virtue can mean that God can also place us in a certain place, and leave us there for a long period of time. He said to Our Lady and Saint Joseph to go to Egypt and remain there. A lot of the process of our sanctification, the course of our life, may be involved in remaining there, in this family, in this marriage, in this job, in this house, with these permutations and combinations.

Humility will lead us to focus on others, to forget about ourselves, and therefore not to talk about ourselves, or to laugh at our own jokes, to know how to pass unnoticed with our own things.

If we know how to take the lowest seats at the banquet table, as Our Lord advised us, that can be a great expression of true humility. We’ll know how not to exalt our own self-image. True humility makes us simple, presenting ourselves to others as we really are, especially in the family. Not wanting to be the center of attention, or being obsessed with pleasing, with looking good and being praised.

Besides distancing us from God and others, humility is essential for living together in peace. Few things are as hard to bear as those who are haughty, proud, boasters, those who know it all, or who end discussions with irony or sarcastic remarks, who were always right, inclined to superficiality, or like to give others a hard time—in a word, who weren’t humble.

If we want to be filled with God’s life and power, then we need to empty ourselves of everything that stands in the way: our vanity, our pride, our self-seeking glory. God wants empty vessels, so that he can fill them with his glory, his power, his love. We have to try and be ready to always humble ourselves and serve, as Jesus did. He said at the Last Supper, “I have given you an example so that you may follow. What I have done to you, do you also to others” (cf. John 13:15).

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.

EW