“the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.”
The Gospel reading today Jesus calls out the Israelites. He speaks to them of their pride and greed for power over the people. The Israelites have two choices. They can embrace and humbly accept this humiliation with gratitude because they have been given a chance to repent, or they can grow prideful and cast out the cornerstone. We will dive deeper into this understanding of humiliation and humility.
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What is humiliation? Humiliation comes from the word “humiliate” which means to “make (someone) feel ashamed and foolish by injuring their dignity and self-respect, especially publicly.” [1]
Is humility and humiliation important? Yes. First, T.S. Elliot said, “The only wisdom we can hope to require is humility…it’s endless” [2] There is never an end to humility. We can never say, “I’m going to pursue humility, conquer it and move on.” We can never master it fully for it’s an ever-ongoing process. We pursue humility for its own sake. Secondly, to continue on the last statement, the pursuit of humility is something that separates us from the animals on earth. Animals do not care about pursing humility and being humble. Only a person with an eternal soul can do this. Saint Francis de Sales says, “I am despised and derided, and I resent it; just so do peacocks and apes. I am despised and derided, and I rejoice at it; thus did the Apostle. This is the deepest grade of humility, to be pleased with humiliation and abjection, as vain minds are pleased with great honors; and to find pain in marks of honor and esteem, as they find it in contempt and affronts.” [3] Lastly, it is good to be humiliated. Without the pursuit of humility it would be impossible to practice any virtue. As Saint Gregory the Great said, “Gathering virtue without humility is like trying to carry dust in the wind.” [4]
What is humility? Humility is “the moral virtue that keeps a person from reaching beyond himself. It is the virtue that restrains the unruly desire for personal greatness and leads people to an orderly love of themselves based on a true appreciation of their position with respect to God and their neighbors. Religious humility recognizes one's total dependence on God; moral humility recognizes one's creaturely equality with others. Yet humility is not only opposed to pride; it is also opposed to immoderate self-abjection, which would fail to recognize God's gifts and use them according to his will.” [5]
Humility comes from the Latin humilitas, from the word humus, which means, “ground”. We recall that we must be ever humble to God. That we are dust and from dust we shall return. We can think of ourselves too much and become prideful, as if we can make it on our own. We must realize we are nothing, absolutely nothing without God. We perish without God. Just as ground beef or milk becomes dangerous to consume as it spoils, humanity becomes toxic without God.
Jesus, because He was fully human, entered fully into the humiliation of humanity. This humiliation did not lessen in anyway His divinity. He showed complete humiliation by pouring out everything for us. The humiliation began the moment of His Incarnation, as He willingly subjected Himself to humiliation by taking on flesh. The Almighty God taking on human flesh. He continues then, being born the Word is completely wordless. He has no way of speaking and completely dependent on Mary, His mother and Joseph, His foster father. Then Jesus is humiliated throughout His proclamation of the Kingdom culminating to the cross where He experiences the complete absence of His Father. Yet because of accepting complete humiliation He is lifted up, praised, exalted, and worshiped! He is the Son of God who now sits at the right hand of the Father.
Why is it good to be humiliated? Humiliation should not be confused with being embarrassed. All of us have had those moments when we notice our pants zipper has been down all day or when we were little and our mother would lick her finger to wipe something off our face. Humiliations are moments when we have been broken down for Christ. For example the moment we get out of confession, desiring to never sin again, and then we fall into sin. The moments we think we have conquered gossip and then find our self-spreading rumors. Humiliation is a part God’s purgation of our soul. “Many of us pray for humility and would like to be humble but few of us desire or want to be humiliated.” [6]
To be on the road to humility one must be humiliated “for just as studying is the way to acquire knowledge, so it is by the way of humiliation that we attain to humility. As long as we only desire the virtue of humility, but are not willing to accept the means thereto, are we not even on the true road to acquiring it.” [7]
We, like those in the parable are in the vineyard. When Christ comes to us, will we be humble enough to accept Him or will we be hesitant or even resistant? The tenants of the parable were prideful and could not give up their good fruit. As Pope Francis said, “Like that young man who was rich: he wanted to go with Jesus, but until a certain point. What is missing is this last anointing of the Christian, to be a true Christian: the anointing of the Cross, the anointing of humiliation. He humiliated himself until death, death to everything. This is the touchstone, the certification of our Christian reality. Am I a Christian of a well-being culture? Am I a Christian that accompanies the Lord to the Cross? The sign is one’s ability to bear humiliation.” [8]
Are we allowed to humiliate others? No. We are called to forgive others trespasses against us. That does not mean we should keep silent against evil and sin. We should always speak up, but we must do so in charity. Jesus spoke out against sin, but never belittled the sinner. In today’s Gospel, Jesus is prophesying, through a parable, the coming persecution they (Israel) will inflict upon the son, Himself, and what the consequence of this persecution will be. We are always called to correct the ignorant, but we must realize that we too are ignorant. We need correcting. If it is done in bitterness or hatred we must strive to accept it even joyfully for the sake of Christ. Only then when will we know we are truly following the path of humility.
What is the advantage of being humbled? Being humbled allows us to be made better, purer if we accept them with the heart of Christ. “It is not the humiliation itself which makes us humble, but the act of the will by which we accept it.” [9] We all face humiliations in this life, but it is how we receive them and submit to them is how we grow in holiness. If someone speaks ill of us or even shows a hatred for God, the suffering we endure can help us to be humble and grow deeper in love with God and others. This love can be poured out here while we are on earth and also in Heaven. “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.” [10]
Finally, going back to the Gospel, are we going to be prideful and seek to cast out and kill the son, or are we going to repent and humble ourselves to the Son? Are we going to allow Christ to humble us in order to repent and turn back to Him, or are we going to turn our back on Him. May we be humiliated for the Gospel and be able to bear humiliations for the Sake of Jesus Christ. Who are we to think that we would not be humbled if the One we follow humbled Himself. We are reminded of this wonderful mystery at every Mass when the priest prays, “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.” [11] It is first in sharing the humility of Christ that we come to share more and more in His divinity.
Search: 12 Steps of Humility
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[1] Webster’s Dictionary
[2] T.S. Elliot, The Four Quartets
[3] St. Francis de Sales
[4] St. Gregory the Great
[5] Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J. Modern Catholic Dictionary
[6] cf. Fr. Gabriel Divine Intimacy pg. 323
[7] Fr. Gabriel, Divine intimacy pg. 324
[8] Pope Francis, Homily September 27, 2013
[9] Fr. Gabriel, Divine Intimacy pgs. 324-325
[10] St. Vincent de Paul
[11] The Order of the Mass