THE ESSENCE OF HUMILITY       2.

“Christ, bring a Divine Person, did not regard His glory as a thing to be clung to during His mortal life. He took the nature of  a slave, a servant to be a mere man.  In humble obedience He undertook a task which led to His death on the cross … in all humility.” (J.P.Arendzen, D.D., Ph.D. M.A. O.P.)

The acknowledgement of the divine almightiness, on the one hand, and of one's imperfection, on the other, are the basis of the attitude which is called humility.
When man, led by a deep faith, encounters the Creator's infinite power, he cannot help perceiving his smallness and weakness, his insignificance, seeing himself as a tiny insect on the shore of a boundless ocean. This is why in the presence of God humility is but the most natural feeling. Vanity and pride can only exist in the one who, being removed far from God, is comparing himself to other minute creatures like himself.

Sound faith, according to the word of the Saviour, is capable of  “moving mountains”  (Matthew 17:20) — not due to some kind of supernatural power that comes along with such faith, as certain sectarians will teach, but because it is capable of attracting the divine power — and the latter can do the impossible.

For this reason all known examples of a firm and wonder-working faith are, at the same time, examples of a profound humility: the woman suffering from hemorrhage (Mark 5:25-28), the mother from Canaan (Matthew 15:22-28), and many others. The stronger one's faith is, the more he is humble; and vice versa, a proud person cannot possess a profound faith, being all absorbed in one's self. Being spiritually weak, he is therefore unquiet and easily scared, although he might do his best in order to conceal it.

Spiritual and lay literature alike have known many examples of great and gifted personalities. Many gifted people realized that they were only too far from the measure of perfection or knowledge that they were capable of achieving. Knowing this did not, to the least extent, make them feeble or low-spirited. On the contrary, it gave them more incentive to pursue excellence.

To think that humility kills one's initiative, giving him an inert and servile disposition, is to miss the essence of Christianity. The latter's decisive trait is that it calls the man to perfection by way of ascension from the present state, which is damaged by sin, to a likeness of God, as is said: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Matthew 5:48). The self-sufficient proud man is in fact the most wretched one, because he is so blind he cannot even perceive his misery (Revelation 3:17).