If we desire the friendship of any one, we avoid what could hurt him. If, then, we desire humility to describe our life, we must beware that nothing in our thoughts, words, or actions would hint of pride or nurture vanity. Consider these:
1) avoid complacency about past good actions; but rather contrast them to our sins; 2) meet temptations of pride by interior acts of humility; 3) avoid speaking of ourselves, either well or ill, without sufficient cause; 4) seek not to dominate in conversation, or to impose our opinion on others; and 5) we must avoid ostentation, immodesty, pretence and anything that wounds humility.
Moral virtues are never infused. We must acquire them for ourselves, and diligently practise them. Thus, the maxims: ‘There is no humility without humiliations.’ Or ‘humiliation is the best way to learn humility’. What hinders us is a want of courage to deny ourselves. God, however, takes pity on us, and sends us humiliations.
These may come as mental sufferings, doubts, scruples, painful and humiliating temptations which oblige us to seek help. Or debilitating sickness makes us useless when we had thought ourselves indispensable. It may be some cruel calumny which attacks our reputation. A painful misunderstanding arises despite our most anxious efforts.
God permits them for our good, for aspiring to a high degree of humility. Instead of complaining, profit from them. Cast down, pray as King David did: ‘It is good for me that Thou hast humbled me.’
Ref: Cf “Practical Meditations” by a Father of the Society of Jesus, 1964, pp376-8
The humility of John the Baptist
The whole of John’s life is determined by his mission: as the ‘voice’ that announces Jesus. His vocation will be to prepare, for Jesus, a people capable of receiving the Kingdom of God. Concurrently, he is to give public testimony of Him. John will not seek personal fulfilment through his work, but to prepare a perfect people for the Lord.
John will fulfil his mission not because it appeals to him, but because he was conceived for this very purpose. This is what all apostolate is about: forgetting oneself and developing a true concern for others. He was to carry out his task to the full, even to the extent of giving up his life in the fulfilment of his vocation.
Many came to know Jesus through John the Baptist’s apostolic work. Through his express indication, the first disciples followed Jesus. And many others were inwardly prepared by his preaching. One’s vocation embraces one’s whole life; and our whole being works towards fulfilment of the divine mission.
In our place and concerns, each of us has a God-given vocation. The Divine Will desires many other things which depend on fulfilment of that vocation. “Many great things depend, don’t forget it, on whether you and I live our lives as God wants.” (St Josemaria Escrivá, “The Way”, 755)
Do we bring people around us closer to God? Do we give good example in our work, at home?
Ref: Cf Francis Fernandez, “In Conversation with God”, 1:58-9
Christian humility
This supernatural virtue is unique because it comes from above. It recognizes the difference between Greek ‘eros’ where the human tends upwardly toward the Divine and Christian ‘agape’ where the Divine stoops down toward us. Humility governs our relationship to God and neighbor.
The Incarnation struck at the indigence and arrogant pride of our humanity in allowing the God-Man to suffer exile, persecution and death to relieve that poverty. Utterly sinless, Christ showed on Calvary how sinners should live humility. Not a creature as we are, but He submitted to the Will of the Father in everything and became our model of humility.
Humility opens us to the grace of God to better resist temptations. The foundation of prayer and the spiritual life, humility facilitates discipleship and imitation of Christ. It is also a natural virtue which opposes pride, arrogance and vanity, the roots of all evil.
Humility promotes an upright conscience; leads to prudence, astuteness and thoughtfulness.
Ref: “Our Sunday Visitor’s Catholic Encyclopedia”, 1991, 490-91
Consumer Society
Man, with his planetary dimension, was never so much aware of all the forces he is capable of putting to use and setting to his own service. Never has he made such use of them. From this point of view, and in this dimension, conviction concerning the progress of mankind is fully justified.
In countries and circles with greater technical progress and greater material well-being, side by side with this conviction, goes an attitude which we usually describe as consumer-oriented. This testifies to the fact that the conviction of the progress of man is only partly justified.
Indeed, it testifies that the direction taken by progress can kill what is most profoundly and most essentially human in man.
The consumer attitude does not take into account all the truth about man. Neither the historical truth, nor the social truth, nor the interior and the metaphysical truth. Rather it is a flight from that reality. Man is created for happiness.
Yes! But man’s happiness is not identified with enjoyment! In such enjoyment the consumer-oriented man loses the full dimension of his humanity; he loses deeper feeling and meaning of life. So, such a direction of progress kills what is most deeply and essentially human in man.
Ref: Cf Pope John Paul II, “Prayers and Devotions”, 1994, p98
Recovery
“We have to love the Blessed Virgin Mary more. We will never love her enough.
“Love her a lot! It shouldn’t be enough for you to put up pictures for her, and greet them, and say aspirations. You should learn to offer her, in your strenuous life, some small sacrifice each day, to show her your love, and to show her the kind of love that we want the whole human race to proclaim for her.”
Ref: St Josemaria Escrivá, “The Forge” 527
THE SEVEN SUNDAYS DEVOTION TO ST. JOSEPH: Honors the seven joys and seven sorrows of St Joseph. (Ref: “Handbook of Prayers”, Fr Charles Belmonte and Fr James Socias [Eds], 1988, pp321-3)
“What must Joseph have been, how grace must have worked through him, that he should be able to fulfill this task of the human upbringing of the Son of God.
“For Jesus must have resembled Joseph: in his way of working, in the features of his character, in his way of speaking. Jesus’ realism, his eye for detail, the way he sat at table and broke bread, his preference for using everyday situations to give doctrine -- all this reflects his childhood and the influence of Joseph.
“It’s not possible to ignore this sublime mystery: Jesus who is man, who speaks with the accent of a particular district of Israel, who resembles a carpenter called Joseph, is the Son of God.”
Ref: St Josemaria Escrivà, “In Joseph’s Workshop” in “Christ is passing by”, 40
3. The third sorrow and joy of St Joseph
His sorrow when he saw Jesus’ blood shed in circumcision, his joy in giving him the name Jesus.
“When the eighth day came and the Child was to be circumcised, they gave him the name Jesus, the name the angel had given him before his conception.” (Lk 2:21)
“Interior life is nothing but continual and direct conversation with Christ, so as to become one with him. And Joseph can tell us many things about Jesus. Therefore, never neglect devotion to him ...”
Ref: St Josemaria Escrivà, “In Joseph’s Workshop”, 56
• Our Lady ‘du Four Chaud’, at Bourges, so-called because, in the year 545, a man is said to have shut up his son in a hot oven, because he had received baptism and communicated on Easter Sunday; he was taken out sound and whole, through the protection of Our Lady. A church was built to the Blessed Virgin in memory of this event.—(Annales de France sous Childebert.) ( “Catholic Gems or Treasures of the Church” Historical Calendar; www.bethlehemobserver.com)
• Our Lady of Pellevoisin, France (1876). (www.divine will.org/feastofourlady.htm); (www.iskandar.com/ourlady/ourladyfeasts.html)
• Our Lady of the Hot Oven (Bourges, France). (maryfest.htm / www.starharbor.com/santiago/m_feasts.html)
• Our Lady of Hot Oven / “Notre Dame de Bourges”. Church in Bourges, France. An alchemist analyzes (in French) the stained glass windows of the church. (www.marylinks.org/Mary-Calendar.htm)
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