With all the finger pointing going on in the world of Politics and Religion these days, I would like to bring up and remember the Virtue of Humility. This single state of being is a way of safely staying away from many sins. How would our world be different if practicing humility was formost among what our Churches taught in America?
Br. Thomas Merton, Trappist monk tells us this:
"It is not humility to insist on being someone that you are not. It is as much as saying that you know better than God who you are and who you ought to be. How do you expect to arrive at the end of your own journey if you take the road to another man's city? How do you expect to reach your own perfection by leading somebody else's life:? His sanctity will never be yours; you must have the humility to work out your own salvation in a darkness where you are absolutely alone... And so it takes heroic humility to be yourself and to be nobody but the man, or the artist, that God intended you to be.
You will be made to feel that your honesty is only pride. This is a serious temptation because you can never be sure whether you are being true to your true self or only building up a defense for the false personality that is the creature of your own appetite for esteem. But the greatest humility can be learned from the anguish of keeping your balance in such a position: of continuing to be yourself without getting tough about it and asserting your false self against the false selves of other people."
Thomas Merton, The New Seeds of Contemplation, New Directions Publishing Co. 1961, p. 100-101
Christine, in her post on Monastic Spirituality says these powerful words:
The practice of humility also leads us to a spirituality of radical newness and reversal. In John’s gospel, Jesus washes the disciples’ feet, giving us a vision of a new order, and image of encountering God in the most unexpected places
What if we truly practiced humility and truth-telling? What if our churches lived out of an awareness of the gifts and limits of institutions, allowing God to truly surprise us with newness? What would it mean for entire nations to practice humility, honoring our collective gifts and limits?
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