Chapter 7: The value of humility (paragraphs 1-3)
The word of God in scripture teaches us in clear and resounding terms that anyone who lays claim to a high position will be brought low and anyone who is modest in self-appraisal will be lifted up. (From para. 1 of Ch. 7 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)
The gravity of pride is great, it seems to me, and pulls me into a self-centered orbit. But when my spirit simply and spaciously refracts my Creator, I am liberated and truly myself.
“For we call our body and soul the sides of the ladder, and into these sides our divine vocation has inserted the different steps of humility and discipline we must climb.” Abba, you have kept my body and soul together for nearly eight decades. My life, the gift of today, is your gift and your call to grow in that “proper estimate of my own excellence”, that is, in humility, as St. Thomas Aquinas defined it. What greater excellence could there be than to grow in turning and becoming a child again and again.
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