Chapter 7: The value of humility (paragraph 9)
The third step of humility is to submit oneself out of love of God to whatever obedience under a superior may require of us; it is the example of the Lord himself that we follow in this way, as we know from St Paul's words: he was made obedient even unto death. (From Para. 9 of Ch. 7 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry OSB, 1997.)
I'm obedient when I respond to another out of love and gratitude, not out of fear or resentment. Love and gratitude are aspects of my true self; fear and resentment are but habits of my ego. Love expands; fear dies; little by little my ego is transformed.
The third step of humility is that I submit to my superior in all obedience for the love of God imitating the Lord who became obedient even to death. With this step, there is the dawning realization that I do not have the last word, nor do I want to, about anything even about God. My relationship to God and to others needs to be burned in the fire of love, the fire of meditation, changing the way I relate to Him and to others, which has been built over the years layer upon layer with the mortar of fear and anxiety and wanting to “do right”.
ReplyDeleteBy “submitting” myself to the “wisdom of another”(Chittister, The Rule of Benedict, p.85) of others, my whole being opens to possibilities of new perspectives about God and other people. It is with the eyes of Christ, with the eyes of love, that I want to see. Like the blind man Bartimeus in the Gospel (Mark 10:46-52), my words echo his, “Master I want to see” in truth, in freedom, in love.