What is humility and how to acquire it?

Source: Google Books

What is humility

It is a feeling of one’s own nothingness, which annihilates, humbles, and deepens the person in the presence of God inwardly, and also before men outwardly.

It is a virtue that makes one joyfully and willingly embrace every insult, contempt, correction, harsh treatment, and humiliation of oneself, with as much contentment as worldly people take in honors and riches.

It is a total destruction of self-love, self-honor, and every appetite for the praise, favor, and affection of men.

It is a lowering and casting down of oneself beneath the feet of every creature, however vile and despised, arising from the low esteem one has of oneself, making one willing to converse with poor people, people of humble station and common condition, and the like, whom the great of this world disdain and refuse even to look upon.

It is to walk in truth before God, always keeping oneself in the place of a poor, naked creature, deprived of every good of grace except insofar as His divine Majesty is pleased to impart it, not because of one’s merits, but according to the greatness of His goodness; therefore attributing to oneself nothing but every fault, failing, and imperfection, while recognizing every good as coming from God.

It is a small regard, or rather no esteem at all, for oneself, notwithstanding whatever gift of grace or singular favor God may come to communicate to one, neither exalting them outwardly before men, nor admiring them excessively inwardly, so as to take complacency in oneself because of them.

Means of acquiring humility

To be fully persuaded that no one can ever despise, humiliate, or afflict us enough in proportion to what we deserve.

Not to concern oneself with whether one is honored or despised, imagining oneself as dead, of whom no one has any memory, or rather as that which truly is nothing.

One must never excuse or justify oneself when one is reproved or accused of something that, nevertheless, one has not done: but bear everything courageously, rejoicing in suffering and enduring for the love of our Lord, without complaining or lamenting to anyone.

One ought to take pleasure in performing lowly and abject tasks, even according to the will of others, as things that are most fitting for oneself.

One must abhor all vain glory, ostentation, and self-complacency, all honor and affection from the world, desiring rather not to be known, recognized, or favored by anyone.

Above all, one must be glad to be reproved, corrected, and punished for one’s faults, without excusing, concealing, or minimizing them, but rather making them known.

And, as the crowning point of all, one must be content that people think that everything one endures is endured unwillingly, with much secret impatience and with desires for revenge, even though one’s heart may be far removed from such things.

It is also very good to have these thoughts often in one’s heart: I am nothing, I am worth nothing, I do nothing well, I am an unprofitable servant. There is no creature that does not correspond better to God according to the grace it has received, and that does not serve Him better in its state than I do. If the person who is now the most miserable in the world had received as many graces and advantages as God has given me, he would serve Him a thousand times more faithfully than I do: and by this means one will ward off thoughts of self-esteem.

He who thus places himself in the lowest place, and humbles himself beneath all things, as I have just said, is easily preserved from all disturbance, anxiety, and discontent in whatever may happen. For by casting himself down and despising himself in this way, he cannot be put lower than he has already placed himself. And so, if every adversity in the world is brought upon him, it will seem to him to be nothing at all compared with what he deserves, and thus nothing will bring him discontent.

If he is insulted, or if he knows that people speak badly of him, this holy humility will teach him to think that if those people knew (as he does) the miseries caused in him by his passions, vicious inclinations, self-will, and such like offspring of sin, they would say even more about him, and thus he will be disturbed by nothing.

**Are you therefore little esteemed, despised, or rejected by this person or that one, by many, or even by everyone? Are you mortified, does everyone have something against you? Take courage. Sic itur ad astra. This is the shortest and surest path to God that you could desire.

Will there be anything in the world sufficient to turn us aside from, or delay, the pursuit of the good we desire? To separate us, as the Apostle says, from the love of Jesus Christ our Lord? Tribulation, anguish, or persecution? No, he says, neither life nor death.

Nor could we give more certain testimony of our little love, and of our little desire for our Lord, than by remaining persistently impatient over a word of contempt, over an adversity, or over a mortification imposed upon us. The desire to gain and profit from our Lord, that is, to attain the enjoyment of His divine love, should be so ardent in our hearts that we ought to pass lightly over all such difficulties, without making much of them.

Sicut lilium inter spinas (says our Lord in the Canticle) sic amica mea inter filias. It is a way of speaking, says the Angelic Saint Thomas, as if this heavenly Bridegroom were proclaiming with the sound of a trumpet that the soul who wishes to be His Bride, His cherished one, His beloved, must be like the rose among the thorns—that is, a peaceful, patient, and tranquil soul in the midst of persecution, mortification, harshness of life, and contempt of self.

Likewise, the Bride in the same Canticle, making it understood how perfectly she had made herself such as her Bridegroom desired, says: Nigra sum, sed formosa, filia Jerusalem. Ideo dilexit me Rex, etc. O daughters of Jerusalem, I am black, but nevertheless I am beautiful: I am black outwardly through external humiliation, humble regard, and contempt of myself, but nevertheless I am beautiful in the eyes of my Bridegroom; therefore, Nolite me considerare quod fusca sim, quia decoloravit me sol. Do not consider me according to my dark color, nor according to what I endure, for the Sun of Justice, Jesus Christ my Lord, for the love of whom I left the world and despised all beauty, has caused me now to expose myself to every kind of contempt, humiliation, and annihilation of myself.

Therefore I say to Him with complete confidence: Veniat dilectus meus in hortum suum, et colligat fructus pomorum suorum. Let Him come into the garden of my soul, for there He will find these flowers, these fruits, and these lilies that He seeks among the thorns.