Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:03 Today's gospel. St John about KIST is echoing the words of Isaiah the prophet. When he says, make ready the way Lord make straight his paths. Make the crooked ways straight and the rough ways smooth. Every month we have an examination of conscience on a different virtue. Then that's what that sort of goal in mind to make the crooked way straight and the rough ways smooth. This month's virtue is humility. Humility is so important that it's one of the two virtues that Christ our Lord explicitly commanded us to learn from. Learn from me for I am meek and humble of heart. Since humility is so important, far more life, and since we've been commanded by our divine savior to be humble, it's important for us to have a clear idea of precisely what it is. But before we look at what humility is, let's take a look at what it is not.
Speaker 0 01:04 It's not some sort of cringing sissified hand ringing, Oh look at me. I sure am worthless routine. That's not humility. St Bernard gives us a guy. He says there are three kinds of humble people and two of them are not humble. First, there's the folks that feel humble, but just because someone feels humble doesn't mean that he is humble and we should all be aware of being cautious about what our feelings do since we don't have the gift of integrity. So there's the people that feel humble. Then there's the folks who think they're humble, they like to think how humble and unworthy they are. But st Bernard points out that just because someone thinks they're humble doesn't mean that he is humble. Third, there's the folks that are humble. They have a virtue which enables them to realize what they are actually in the sight of God and then to act accordingly.
Speaker 0 02:04 So again, according to st Bernard, there's three kinds of humble people, the first two of whom are not humble at all. And that's the people that feel humble, the people that think they're humble, and then the people who actually are humble, who realize what they are in the set of God and act accordingly. So if we want to get a good grip on the true virtue of humility, we need to remind ourselves of exactly what we are in the sight of God. Send. That way we can realize how to act accordingly. Okay, father, so how are we in the sight of God? Well, to answer that, we'll do a little Ruthie. We've heard all this before. We need to start by reminding ourselves of two facts that should be obvious. First off, we're all creatures. B, it creates your means that we depend on God for both our being and our existence.
Speaker 0 02:52 Second off, God is not a creature. He's not dependent on anything for his baby. He is the self existent being as he made perfectly clear to Moses when he told him his name, I am who am. So we'll follow Frank sheet for a moment to unpack those two truths first, that God is a self existent being and second, that we're creatures that depend on him. First of all, God doesn't exist because of any other thing. He's the source of all things as we sing in the creeds, the creator of heaven and earth. Of all things visible and invisible. He's the self existing B. That means that his nature is such that he must exist. God must exist. Created beings may or may not exist. Each of us has a birthday a year before our birthday, two years before our birthday, 10 years before birthday, we didn't exist.
Speaker 0 03:47 God must exist. He cannot not exist. His nature is to exist. God is existence now. That's really incredible. If we were thinking about it, to see the incredible difference, we'll take a look again at this podium. He'll help us think about the great difference between God and creatures. When the carpenter finished making this podium and washed his hands and went home to suffer, why did it continue being a podium? Because it's made out of wood. And what has properties that make it hard and solid and so forth. So when the carpenter left this podium, it continued existence by virtue of the properties of the material he made it out of, which is wood. What has those properties? So he could walk away from it and it'd stay existence by virtue of the properties of wood. Okay, so what father? Well, think about this. If God who's the maker of all creatures left them, they would continue in existence by relying on a material out of which he made them.
Speaker 0 04:46 And what material did God use to make everything? Nothing. God didn't use anything. He made everything out of nothing. What are we saying then? What we're saying is the fact that all creatures are given existence by God and the fact that you used absolutely no material, and when he's making him me, that he must continually hold all creatures, including us above the surface of nothingness constantly at all times. In other words, he's constantly pouring, be in tall things that exist. Cause if he walked away and left him for even a moment, these creatures including us would instantly cease to exist. We'd collapse back into nothingness. We'd been existence by virtue of the material, the properties, the material on which he made us, which is nothing. That means every creature, the podium, you, me, every thought, even our sinful dots, every creature, everything is held above the surface of nothing at all times by God.
Speaker 0 05:47 So much for the review. We've heard that all before. Okay. Father, what does this have to do with the virtue of humility? Remember that humility is a virtue which enables us to realize what we actually are in the sight of God and then that enables us to act accordingly. And so now we just seen the first and most fundamental truth about what we are in the sight of God and every creature decided God is that we depend absolutely completely on him. Absolutely and completely what we really are in the side of God are these little bits of nothingness that he's holding up into. B, we can do nothing of ourselves, but the picture still doesn't end there. What do we have that God hasn't given us? What can we claim that's actually ours? With the exception of course of our divine Lord and his mother, every one of us has used misused and abused the gifts that God has given us as Saint Paul says for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
Speaker 0 06:50 So what do we have that God hasn't given us? What can we claim that's actually ours? Since the only thing that we can actually claim that's 100% ours or our sins, that's nothing to brag about. Our Lord revealed to Saint Catherine of Sienna, that if even we've ever committed to even one single tiny video sin, even one, no punishment on earth could fully could ever fully make amends for it. No punishment on earth could fully make amends for even one tiny venial sin. So when we see things correctly, when we're seeing clearly through the lens of humility, we realize that what we are are little bits of nothing constantly held into being by God and besides existence he's poured on. And so many gifts of nature and grace and what have we done? We've turned around in a pit and paid back his incredible generosity with our sins and by our sins, we deserve punishment and the punishment, we deserve frameless smarts.
Speaker 0 07:54 And it's more than could be done. We could do suffering this whole life. So that's reality. And once we realize that that's humility and it also makes us realize that we should want to suffer anything that God wills just to suffer, especially if it's painful, unpleasant in reparation for what we've done against him. Okay. Father, but you said melody is a virtue which enables us to realize what we are in the sight of God. Now we've seen what we are in the sight of God. It's a little bit to nothing. He's holding above the surface of nothingness and we've repaid him by sinning. But what are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to conduct ourselves? Now we've realized that that's a good question. Saint Peter Julian eMAR gives us Nancy CLO. Jesus invite us to be like humble of heart. But what is humility afar?
Speaker 0 08:47 It consists in receiving humiliations from God with a submissive love and accepting one state of life in one's duties, whatever they are, and not being ashamed of one's condition. Close quote st Peter, Julian, mr. So humility of heart is receiving humiliations from God with submissive love, accepting our state of life and duties and not be ashamed of or a condition. Okay, so we can see what accepting our state in life is and our duties. Not be ashamed of our condition. But what does it mean to accept humility with a submissive love? Well, there's really three ways. Only three ways we can react and litigations that come our way. First, we can rebel. That's not humble. Second, we can accept that. That's good. We have basic humility. Then since humility requires us to accept our sufferings without resentment or rebellion, we want to strive to accept these humiliations and sufferings as calmly and just passionate is possible.
Speaker 0 09:48 And that includes even the reaction to the humiliation of our own students. See, a proud man is amazed. Just shocked when he falls into sin. I can't believe I did that, but a humble man repents and he gets up and dust himself off and says, well, see Lord, that's how I am. He's not making an excuse. He recognized his weakness. Saint Francis to sail says it. Calmness and peacefulness. What? Considering our sins and our sinfulness, it's a very useful me for growing in the virtue of humility. Saint Catherine or channel, I would find yourself guilty of a center in perfection. She calmly explained, well Lord, there's just another fruit from my garden. If you don't protect me, I'll be guilty of far worse. And of course we know the expression of st Philip Neri every morning he turned our Lord and say, Lord, if you don't keep both hands on me today, I'm going to betray you far worse than Judas.
Speaker 0 10:42 That's humility. We get troubles, we accept them and when we fail we say, well, see I am Lord. That's just another fruit from my garden so we could rebel. That's not good. We can accept humiliations or third possibility is we can cheerfully accepted. Why? Because there were more close to the imitating Christ our Lord. He his work, his salvation for my quota indicating the saints who know how to behave. For example, Saint France or she was traveling with a fellow Jesuit one time and ended up sharing a room one night and this poor man is sharing a room with very congested and having some kind of coughing, hacking spell all night. It's been up phlegm and coughing and hacking in the morning is horrified when he woke up and realized that he just spit all over st Francis all over him and especially all over his face.
Speaker 0 11:33 St Francis hadn't woken him up all night. St Francis, he said, relax. Don't worry. I can't think of a place more fitting for spit on than my face. Now we find that horrible. It tells us how much we have to grow in humility. Huh? Because our Lord certainly had that kind. Humility being humble of heart means either we accept humiliations without resentment or rebellion or better yet we cheerfully accepted. It means accepting our state of life and our duties, whatever they might be and that we're not ashamed of our condition, but we don't need the stories of the saints to understand that. Look around in the church. Think for awhile on the crucifix or the stations or think about the major scene and what Christmas signify. There's enough meditations on humility in either of those three things, the crucifix, the way the cross or the manger to last an entire eternity.
Speaker 0 12:36 We've seen it. Humility is a virtue which an AFP provides what they actually are in the sight of God and to act accordingly. We've seen it in reality. God is holding us above the surface of nothingness that we all in everything and what have we done? We have repaid him by our sins and that means we deserve any punishment we might get. We need to shape our conduct according to the truth with means. Either we accept humiliations without resentment or billion or better. Yeah, we prayed that we have the grades to cheerfully accept them. We accept our state of life and our duties, whatever they might be, and we're not ashamed of our condition. Let's close with a thought from st John clinic who's quo. Humility is the only virtue that no devil can imitate. If pride may, demons are the angels. There's no doubt that humility could make angels out of demons. Humility is the only virtue no devil can imitate. If pride may demons out of angels, there's no doubt that humility could make angels out of demon. If humility could make an angel out of a team and it can surely make a sane out of any one of us. Oh, cheeses make and humble of heart make our hearts like kind design name of the father and the son, the Holy spirit. Amen.
