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Cardinal Basil Hume OSB |
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Humility |
| Most people are only too aware that they have failed to
achieve the ideal. Failure, like restlessness, can also be a friend, for
its role is to introduce us to humility. Humility is facing up to reality,
that is, to the truth about ourselves, our sinfulness and limitations.
Humility is a lovely virtue, edifying to behold, essential to the spiritual life, uncommonly difficult to acquire. It forces us to cast ourselves on the mercy of God. We look now to Him to find us, rather than seeing it the other way round. It has dawned on us that our search for Him was but our reacting to His for us. It is often the unlearned and the deprived, as the world would judge who have the clearest and deepest understanding of the things of God. It will, in fact, be so for those who are truly humble, whether learned or not. Perhaps a better word than humility is freedom, internal freedom. Freedom from what? From being self-seeking, self-regarding, self-indulgent, self-opinionated. Freedom for what? Freedom to find Him who is the source of all our desires. Free to love. You cannot love unless you are free. The consciousness of failure and frailty must not lead to despondency, but rather to complete trust and confidence in God's help. We have to move from preoccupation with our own perfection to an intense interest in the perfection of God. There is a double process that goes on all the time: increasingly we identify with that poor tax collector whose prayer was: "Lord be merciful to me a sinner" while at the same time there grows the conviction that God's love for us is strong, warm and intimate. It is this which calls forth from us a response of love. The abyss of our nothingness has to be filled with the immensity of God's love. Humility is a loveable virtue - delightful to observe in others, painfully difficult to acquire for oneself. Rogues! What is appealing about rogues - not the wicked or evil person - is their humility. You never meet a conceited rogue!
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