Objective Truth Series – reflections article #2

 The first reflection spoke of the work of God on souls, namely, His forming His Elect.  He has a school of sanctity. What does God teach in this school?  He teaches the life of virtue, most importantly, charity, and its foundation, which is humility.

     

It seems that this school of sanctity happens in levels or stages.  First God attracts the soul to humility. Then the soul seeks knowledge of humility. This fosters more love of this virtue and a desire for more knowledge of it.  By this means God lets the soul absorb humility into the soul and humility gets into the bloodstream, as it were, and into the very marrow of the bones, so to speak. The love of humility takes a sort of hold on the soul and the soul has no desire to stop learning more about humility. On the contrary, the soul becomes more and more enamored with the quest of humility, looking to find examples of this lovely virtue everywhere.

God teaches humility in His school of sanctity to souls throughout their life. His teaching comes in all shapes and forms. It comes in the Scriptures, sermons, good books and articles, from advice of friends, and even from the comments of enemies.  His teaching comes from events and circumstances. His teaching comes from crosses or things that seem like crosses. When a soul begins to seek humility and begins to seek examples of humility, then examples of humility come in abundance!!  For example, when reading Scripture, the words “poor,” and “little”, stand out and represent the humble, whereas, “rich”, and “fat”, represent the proud.  God trains the eye of the soul to spot the words and passages of the Scriptures that refer to the humble and likewise the words and passages that speak of the proud and the words and passages that warn about pride.  

The beauty of humility becomes more and more evident as one “hunts” for examples of humility. Thus, the soul begins to love this virtue with a tender love and delights when it finds another example of humility. The soul becomes able to detect humility in actual examples of those around him as well. Lastly, and most thrilling of all, is the soul taking real notice of the Humility of Jesus Christ Himself. The Gospels take on a wonderful charm of their own when looking to see what the Good Lord Himself shows regarding humility.  There seems to be no end to the examples that Our Lord shows. Our Lord says, “Unless you become as little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.”  Our Lord speaks of humility so often and with such emphasis, that it is certainly clear that Our Lord desires for His Elect to have humility and that humility is absolutely necessary for salvation. When the hunt has begun, words such as these might come to mind:

O Lord that I may ever seek;

Examples that prove that I am weak;

In passages of Thy Word Divine;

May I find humility in every line.

Delight my soul with this edifying fruit;

To hinder pride from taking deeper root.

In my soul make Thy work complete;

Please make me fitting and meet.

May it be our constant prayer, dear reader, that this hunt for humility takes root in our souls and bear an abundant harvest!