Chapter 7: The value of humility (paragraph 14)
In the end we may learn to say: it was good for me, Lord, that you humbled me so that I might learn your precepts. (From para. 14 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)
From meditation, I've learned this: A blow to my ego can "reset" my patience and give me an opportunity to un-attach, allowing me to realign with my True Self.
Benedict seems to me to be saying here what every genuine seeker has learned: that spiritual awakening begins and God appears first of all to most of us as G-O-D, the Gift Of Desperation. I must be humbled before I can be exalted. Jose Ortega y Gasset put it most dramatically: “These are the only genuine ideas, the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce.”
ReplyDeleteThese readings on humility are tough for me. In our meditation group meeting we heard a Fr. Laurence Freeman tape on love. The first part of the tape was on learning to love the self. Three steps were mentioned--self-knowledge, self-acceptance, and self- transcendence. Taking this in, I realize how difficult it is at times to accept my littleness and ordinariness. But it is exactly through this ordinariness and littleness that God's glory can shine. Why? Because I don't cloud up the sky with trying to hide behind false pretenses. It is "we, sinners, wranglers, weaklings, provided only that we love God, are sent to give the life of the Risen Christ to the whole world, through the daily bread of our human love."(Caryll Houselander, The Risen Christ, 12) It is good that you are teaching me about humility, Lord, in order that I may truly love you.
ReplyDelete