Humility is not very popular. It’s clear to see that any sort of action to take yourself off of a pedestal is seen as unhealthy in today’s culture. More than that, we need to fight against mankind’s oldest and strongest enemy if we want to humble ourselves, and that enemy is pride.
Pride caused angels to fall from Heaven. Pride also caused humans to fall from grace. It separates us from Our God, because rather than loving Him we love ourselves. It is the root of sin, when we place our own wants and plans above what God asks of us.
Humility allows us to reorder ourselves. It allows us to place God far above ourselves as He should be. When we are humble, we know that we are deeply loved by God, but also so is that person who insulted us. In order to love our enemy, to love all our neighbors, truly and completely, we need to bring ourselves down to their level. We need to make sure that we don’t assume superiority over others. We need to realize that we do not know more than God, and honestly probably don’t know more than other people.
Humility is Hard
This is painful however. As I said, this is not seen as something that is healthy by our culture. Our culture tells us that we need to decide for ourselves what is right, and that anyone who disagrees should be cut off. Any person who has an opinion against our own must be crazy or deficient, or are an enemy. Everything is personal, because every personal opinion is seen as a hard fact.
It’s VERY difficult to tell ourselves we are wrong. After all, we spend all this energy building ourselves up, why would we ever go against it? The echo chamber we create for ourselves is comfortable. Leaving this comfort and taking a hard look at ourselves? To say the least it’s not a pleasant experience.
Poisonous Pride
Humility is nothing but truth, and pride is nothing but lying
St Vincent De Paul
I get it, it feels great to inflate ourselves, and to pump ourselves up. The problem is it destroys us. Pride does not satisfy our needs as human beings, it only pretends to. Pride is fleeting, and we seek more and more of it so we don’t have to face ourselves. Pride often masks our deficiencies, or completely distracts from them. As a result, we never address any problems with ourselves, we just want to keep masking and distracting.
Pride also damages our relationships with others. Rather than caring for the other person and trying to help them for the sake of loving them, we start asking how they can help us. Other people need to cater to our needs, and when they don’t they’re not worth our time. This is what pride does to us, it divides us from other people, and only those who contribute to the pride can be allowed to be around.
If pride damages our relationships with people, it most definitely damages our relationship with God. Pride tends to make people embrace sin rather than reject it. When we’re the center of our own world, why not just do whatever feels good? Why would we have to follow any rules, can’t we make our own rules? A prideful person only prays when they want something from God, never to praise or thank Him, and certainly never to submit to His will. And these prayers are usually few and far between, because a prideful person doesn’t ask for help very often.
Humility Is Not Self-hatred
Humility isn’t thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.
C. S. Lewis
We might be tempted to tear ourselves down in our pursuit of humility, but we need to realize this is not at all what humility is. Humility is not a hatred of ourselves. As the great C. S. Lewis affirms, humility is thinking of ourselves less. Often times when people tear themselves down in an attempt to squash their pride, they just trade it for another form of pride, self-hatred.
In this situation, a person will still have themselves at the center of their thoughts and actions. They may not think highly of themselves, but they are still only thinking of themselves. Despair is often a result of self-hatred, and the person stops believing that they will make it to heaven one day. They only believe they are inherently flawed, and believe in heretical things like God made a mistake creating them, or that they need to earn God’s love. This is indeed a dark place to be in, and is precisely where the enemy wants certain people. It is just as poisonous for our soul as the self-inflated pride we usually think of.
Humble-bragging
Like I mentioned humility is not self hatred. It’s also important to note that humility should not be bragged about in order to receive attention. Humble-bragging is what this is often called. When we display an act of humility for the approval of others, it immediately becomes pride. Intentionality is important. And so is what we do afterwards. We should not seek any sort of reward for being humble, humility is all about rejecting any attention or reward.
What Does Humility Look Like?
As C. S. Lewis stated, humility is thinking of yourself less. And what must replace that space in your thoughts? God. God must be foremost in our thoughts when we are humble. Humility is when we understand what God thinks of us.
God so loved us, He sent His only begotten Son to die for us. Jesus suffered unimaginable pain for us because He loved us. And why did He have to? Because we couldn’t do it on our own. We are profoundly loved by Christ, but without Him we cannot make it to His Kingdom. We cannot hope to merit our own salvation, and cannot go our own way. We also need to realize that all other people are deeply loved. Christ did die for all people. So we need to help others, to love others, and not place ourselves above them.
In other words, humility is God centered, not self centered.
How To Be More Humble?
This is a question that could take years to answer, but hopefully I can give you a few tips to get started.
- As I said before, humility is being God centered, not self centered. So it would make sense that filling our minds with God will help us become more humble. Prayer, especially mental prayer and meditative prayer, are very helpful.
- We also need to examine ourselves more often. Not that we should think of ourselves, but we should think of how we are living up to God’s standards. People often turn to pride to hide their deficiencies, but if we take on deficiencies and conquer them, we have no reason to use pride to make ourselves feel better.
- We must frequent the sacraments of reconciliation and the Eucharist. Reconciliation (confession) turns out hearts back to God, helping us orient our life in the right direction and filling our minds with Him, instead of us. The Eucharist feeds us spiritually, and we consume Our Lord so that He is literally within us. This strengthens us against pride and increases our virtue of humility.
- Adoration is fantastic in filling our thoughts and hearts with Christ. When we sit in His presence and just contemplate Him and His love, we can’t help but leave the chapel only thinking of God.
- Reading scripture is a powerful thing. It teaches us more about God and what He expects of us. It teaches us about how much God loves us, and how we owe our love to Him. And of course there’s the many examples of humble people in the stories in the Bible. Christ of course, is the ultimate example, since He embodied every virtue perfectly.
Saints Quotes On Humility
If there is a truly happy soul on Earth, it can only be a truly humble soul.
St Faustina Kowalska
Humility is to the various virtues what a chain is in a rosary. Take away the chain and the beads are scattered. Remove humility and all virtues vanish.
St John Vianney
Humility is the source of all peace.
St John Bosco
As gifts increase in you, let your humility grow, for you must consider that everything is given to you on loan.
Saint Padre Pio
The most powerful weapon to conquer the devil is humility. For, as he does not know at all how to employ it, neither does he know how to defend himself from it.
St Vincent De Paul
If humble souls are contradicted, they remain calm; if they are calumniated, they suffer with patience; if they are little esteemed, neglected, or forgotten, they consider that their due; if they are weighed down with occupations, they perform them cheerfully.
St Vincent De Paul
The truly humble reject all praise for themselves, and refer it all to God
St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori
It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels.
St Augustine of Hippo
If all flowers wanted to be roses, nature would lose her springtime beauty and the fields would no longer be decked out with little wildflowers.
St Theresé of Lisieux
So Stay Humble
Stay humble guys. Don’t let the enemy tempt you to pride. Pride separates us from God, because it places ourselves above Him, and above others. We are called to the humble life as Catholics. The world calls us to the prideful life. Which will you choose?