By Fr. Roy Cimagala
WE can never overemphasize the importance of this virtue of humility. It helps us to be simple and sincere, transparent and consistent to our beliefs and words. We can avoid what Christ once complained about the Pharisees of his time when he said, “Do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example. For they preach but they do not practice.” (Mt 23,3)
Indeed, humility helps us to do what we are supposed to do, and to do it with love and great dedication, in a manner that is gratuitous and without any strings attached. With humility, our true color, our true identity as children of God would really come out.
Humility is what preserves whatever goodness we have, whatever we have received from God, since it is what makes us receptive to God’s grace. And if we happen to lose that goodness, it is also this virtue that helps us to recover it.
We should do everything to grow always in this virtue. Of course, this virtue is a very tricky and slippery one. The moment we say we are humble, the tentacles of pride start to grab us. We can never say we are humble enough. We have to continue to grow in it, always identifying the shifting frontlines of the battle for humility as we go on with our life.
The reason our first parents lost their state of original justice was precisely because they were overtaken by pride, by the thought that they can replace God. They were intoxicated by the goodness they were enjoying then. That’s why they disobeyed God’s command not to eat of the forbidden fruit.
For us to see the true value of humility, we only have to look at Christ. Being the Son of God, and God himself, he shows us how humility indeed preserves goodness and restores it once that goodness is lost.
We need to understand that humility involves giving our will to the will of God. It is a giving away that actually is not a loss at all but an immense gain for us. That’s because that is how we have been created, how we have been designed. Without God, like a branch cut off from the vine, we would just die and are capable only of doing evil.
And precisely because Christ did only what his Father commanded him to do, he managed to recover us from the state of sin and restore us to the state of grace. How truly important it is to be humble. It is what would enable us to obey God’s will, and to do so irrespective of the great cost in terms of suffering it may involve.
In the case of Christ, he managed to make that supreme sacrifice of offering his life for our sake. Humility, as we can see here, is never a passive virtue, much less a sign of weakness. It is strength, it is power, it fuels our capacity to love all the way to the end.
We need to do everything to grow in this virtue every day. Let’s never take it for granted, for many now are the occasions when we are tempted to be on our own, to fall into pride and blinding egoism.
Remember, it’s humility that preserves whatever goodness we have, and recovers it once it is lost. Let’s develop the attitude of doing what we have to do yet passing unnoticed, always eager to serve and not to be served. And as St. Paul said, “in humility, let each esteem others better than themselves.” (Phil 2,3)
Email: [email protected]
