• "Humility,"
says St. Bernard, "is the foundation and guardian of virtues;" and
with reason, for without it no other virtue can exist in a soul. Should she
possess all virtues, all will depart when humility is gone.
St. Francis de Sales wrote to St. Jane Frances de Chantal, "God so
loves humility, that whenever He sees it, He is immediately drawn
thither." This beautiful and so necessary virtue was unknown in the world;
but the Son of God Himself came on earth to teach it by His Own example, and
willed that in that virtue in particular we should endeavour to imitate Him: Learn
of Me, because I am meek and humble of heart.
• Mary,
being the first and most perfect disciple of Jesus Christ in the practice of
all virtues, was the first also in that of humility, and by it merited to be
exalted above all creatures.
The first effect of humility of heart is a lowly opinion of ourselves. St
Teresa: Humility is truth. A humble heart always acknowledges the special
favors of the Lord, to humble herself the more. The Divine Mother, by the greater
light by which she knew the infinite greatness and goodness of God, also knew
her own nothingness, and therefore, more than all others, humbled herself. A
soul that is truly humble
refuses her own praise; and should praises be bestowed on her, she refers them
all to God.
At the Annunciation, Mary is disturbed at hearing herself praised by St.
Gabriel; ..and when St. Elizabeth said, Blessed are you among women ... and
why has this happened to me, that the Mother of my Lord comes to me? ... and
blessed is she who has believed, [Luke 1:42-45], Mary referred all to God,
and answered in that humble Canticle, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and
my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for He has looked with favour on the
lowliness of his servant.” She spoke of the lowliness of His servant to
make sure nobody misunderstood what she meant by “servant”.
• Those
who are humble are retiring and choose the last places; and therefore Mary,
when her Son was preaching in a house, wishing to speak to Him, would not of
her own accord enter, but remained outside, and did not avail herself of her
maternal authority to interrupt Him, as it is related by St. Matthew, [12:46]
• “The Lord scatters the proud and
exalts the lowly.” There are two kinds of exaltation: self-exaltation and
divine exaltation. The greatest danger for us is self-exaltation, because it
opposes the condition for divine exaltation, that is, lowly, Marian humility. She
declared that the Lord fills the hungry (those who admit their emptiness) with
good things. Hunger in the Bible means emptiness not only of the body, but a
symbol of the admitted emptiness of everything. By ourselves, we are emptiness,
a vacuum. We must admit that we are a vacuum, or we shall not be filled by the
goodness of God. We must admit and constantly confess our emptiness, which is
another word for humility.
• Humility
serves. Humility waits on others. Mary did not refuse to go and serve Elizabeth
for three months. Elizabeth wondered that Mary should have come to visit her;
but what is still more admirable is, Mary came not to be ministered to, but to
minister. This is the mother of God, but only because she is also the lowly
handmaid of the Lord.
The more gifted a person, the more prone that person is to pride. Possession
of anything naturally generates pride. And not only does possession generate
pride, but the greater the possession the more pride it generates. Wealth of
any kind inflates the human heart. The more a person has of physical or mental
or moral or even spiritual riches, the harder it is for that person to be
humble, to serve. How are we to be humble? How can we possess without being
proud? Only through being in the presence of Jesus Christ.
• Mary's
humility is a paradox. The most gifted creature ever produced by the Creator
was also the lowliest in her own eyes. That is the key to humility: seeing
everything we are, everything we have, everything we hope to become, everything
we hope to achieve or possess – seeing everything as a free, undeserved and totally
gratuitous gift from God.
But this is possible only by the grace with which God who became man
provides us. The same grace He provided Mary by His Real Presence with her, He
provides by His Real Presence with us today. There's no more basic reason for
the Real Presence on earth of Jesus Christ than to provide us with the humanly
impossible grace of humility.
References:
St Alphonsus Liguori. The
Glories of Mary: –: http://www.catholictradition.org/Mary/humility-mary.htm
Fr John Hardon, posted by Fr Fernando OMV: http://cloudoffire.blogspot.com/2009/03/mary-perfect-model-of-humility.html
John Hardon S.J. (1914-2000)
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0943.htm
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