Humility Rules by Augustine Wetta

Author:Augustine Wetta [Wetta, Augustine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9781681497877
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2017-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

SELF-ABASEMENT IN WORD

Do not desire to be called holy before you are; but be holy first, that you may be truly so called.

—Chapter 4: The Tools of Good Works

Saint Benedict, it appears, was comfortable with the idea that his monks might want to be called holy. But what place can ambition have in a monastery of all places, where one comes to pursue a life of humility and self-denial? Isn’t this vainglory? Saint Benedict doesn’t seem to think so. And he has the Scriptures to back him up. In his letter to Timothy, Saint Paul himself boasts: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. From now on, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness” (2 Tim 4:7).

At first glance, language like this can be confusing, because we tend to equate humility with self-deprecation: “Oh, it was nothing, really”, “Oh, it’s just something I threw together”, or my own personal favorite: “I’m the biggest sinner of them all”, which actually turns out to be a form of boasting, doesn’t it? Self-abasement is not self-deprecation, but self-knowledge. So if you really are good at something, it is no act of humility to belittle your talents. When you do that, you just wind up insulting God, who gave you those talents in the first place.

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