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Friends, today’s Gospel exposes the pride of the Pharisees
and concludes with the prescription of humility. I want to reflect on
this virtue.
St.
Augustine said that all of us, made from nothing, tend toward nothing. We
can see this in our frailty and sin and mortality. St. Paul said, “What
do you possess that you have not received? But if you have received it,
why are you boasting as if you did not receive it?”
To
believe in God is to know these truths. To live them out is to live in
the attitude of humility. Thomas Aquinas said humilitas veritas, meaning “humility
is truth.” It is living out the deepest truth of things: God is God and
we are not.
Now,
all of this sounds very clear when it’s stated in this abstract manner,
but man is it hard to live out! In our fallen world, we forget so readily
that we are creatures. We start to assume that we are gods, the center of
the universe.
The
ego becomes a massive monkey on our backs, and it has to be fed and
pampered constantly. What a liberation it is to let go of the ego! Do you
see why humility is not a degradation but an elevation?
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