SUMMARY.

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XI. - HUMILITY.

V. The degrees

One of the greatest obstacles to the Divine outpourings is formed by pride; humility removes this obstacle. I. Necessity of humility. II. St. Benedict's concept of humility and the important place he gives to it in the inner life. Nature of this virtue. - III. What St. Thomas, following the example of St. Benedict, assigns as the root of humility: reverence towards God, to which the holy Patriarch allies the most absolute confidence. — IV. Degrees of humility laid down by St. Benedict; the two first degrees of inward humility equally concern simple Chritians. that are, properly speaking, monastic. humility; its necessity, its degree. VII. How humility accords with truth and is allied to confidence. - VIII. The most precious fruit of this virtue: it most efficaciously prepares the soul to receive the abundance of Divine outpourings, and perfect charity. IX. Means of attaining this virtue : prayer; contemplation of the Divine perfections ; consideration of the humiliations of Christ Jesus. - X. Christ makes the humble soul share in His heavenly exaltation.

VI. Outward

NE of the greatest revelations that Our Lord has given to us through His Incarnation is that of God's immense desire to communicate Himself to our souls in order to be their beatitude. God might have dwelt throughout eternity in the fruitful solitude of His one and triune Divinity; He has no need of the creature, for nothing is wanting to Him Who, alone, is the fulness of Being and the First Cause of all things: Bonorum meorum non eges1. But having decreed, in the absolute and immutable liberty of His sovereign Will, to give Himself to us, the desire He has of realising this Will is infinite. We might be tempted at times to believe that God may be "indifferent," that His desire to communicate Himself is vague, inefficacious; but these are human conceptions, images of the weakness of our nature, too often unstable and powerless. In God all is pure act; that which in our miserable language we call Divine desire," is an act really indistinct from the Divine essence, and consequently infinite.

In this, as in all that touches our supernatural life, we

1. Ps. xv, 2.

Christ, the Ideal of the Monk.

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must allow ourselves to be guided not by our imagination, but by the light of Revelation. It is God Himself to whom we must listen when we wish to know the Divine Life; it is towards Christ that we must turn, towards the Beloved Son Who is ever in the Bosom of the Father", in sinu Patris1, He Who has Himself revealed the Divine secrets : Ipse enarravit. What does He tell us? That God so loved men, that He has given them His Only-begotten Son: Sic Deus dilexit mundum ut Filium suum unigenitum daret. And why has He given Him? That He may be our justice, our redemption, our holiness. Christ Jesus, in obedience to His Father, Sicut mandatum dedit mihi Pater, delivered Himself up to us even to the death of the Cross, even to the state of the Host, even to be our Food: in finem. Would God have carried love to these extremes if He did not infinitely desire to communicate Himself to us? For, according to the thought of St. Thomas, God's love is not a passive love, since being the First Cause of all things, He cannot receive anything: it is an efficacious love, necessarily efficient. And because God loves us, He wishes with an unbounded love and an efficacious will, to give Himself to us. But then, one might ask, why does He not give Himself infallibly? Why are souls to be found to whom God does not communicate Himself? Why so often such parsimony in the outpouring of the Divine gifts? Why are there so many souls who seem as if they ought to abound in graces, and are yet so destitute of gifts from on high? When we study the action of grace in souls, we are astonished, in passing from one to another, to notice the difference in the effects produced. With some, grace blossoms in an abundance of lights and gifts; these souls advance visibly; they are filled with something divine, which is often manifested by the spiritual and beneficial influence which radiates from them. With others, on the contrary, it is quasi-sterility; the Sacraments, Mass, holy reading, the observance of the Rule, all these means, which although they are authentic channels of Divine grace produce little effect in them. And yet, when one examines these souls, nothing is to be discovered, at least at first sight, which explains such a difference. Why does their outward regularity leave them without habitual union with God, and without any real progress ? The answer to this question is easily to be found in certain pages of our preceding conference. Among the souls we have been considering, some are rich in spirit": Divites 1. Joan., 1, 18. - 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. XIV, 31. — 4. I-II, q. cx, a. 1.

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spiritu, the others are poor in spirit": Pauperes spiritu1. For the latter there is the Kingdom of God, with the abundance of all good things; Esurientes implevit bonis; for the former, the destitution of their utter nothingness: Divites dimisit inanes 2.

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We all have obstacles within us that hinder God's action : sin, the roots of sin, perverse tendencies not fought against; for 3 what fellowship hath light, with darkness 3? Tnese obstacles are overcome by souls who renounce everything, created things, and themselves, who increase their capacity for what is divine, by detachment from all that is not God. They look only to God for all they need; they are humble in themselves, they rely only upon God; God fills these pauperes spiritu with good things. As to the others, they bear within them a tendency particularly qualified to form an obstacle to God; this tendency is pride. Pride is radically opposed to the Divine communications; God cannot give Himself to these self-satisfied divites spiritu. This is a fact often to be met with.

In studying this fact more deeply, we shall acknowledge how necessary humility is for the life of the soul; we shall understand how right our holy Father was in wishing this virtue to be placed as the very basis of our monastic life; then we will specify its nature and character. We will examine next the " degrees of humility," such as St. Benedict defined them; we shall be enabled to follow the manifestations of the virtue, and finally to point out the means conducive to its development in our souls.

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Let us ask Christ Jesus Whom we want to imitate more closely, after having left all things to follow Him, to teach us this humility. It is the virtue to which He willed especially to draw the attention of our souls. One phrase of the Holy Gospel begins with these words: "Learn of Me... Discite a Me4. What is this thing that we are most specially to learn of Him? Is it that He is God? the sovereign Being, All-powerful, full of wisdom? What we must learn of Him", says St. Augustine, "is not that He has formed the world, created all things visible and invisible, that in this world which is His handiwork He has wrought miracles, and raised the dead to life": Discite a me non mundum fabricare, non cuncta visibilia et invisibilia creare, non in ipso mundo miracula facere, et mortuos suscitare 5. Does He wish us to learn from Him the most heroic

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2. Luc. 1, 53. — 3. II Cor. vi, 14. 4. Matth. xI, 29. Sermo 10 de Verbis Domini. P. L. Sermo 69, n. 2.

virtues, that He was obedient unto death, that He delivered Himself up wholly to His Father's will, that He was devoured with zeal for the interests of the Father's glory and those of our salvation? Without doubt He practised all these virtues with wonderful perfection: but what He wants us especially to learn of Him is that He is "meek and humble of heart," those virtues of self-effacement and silence, virtues unperceived by men, or even disdained by them 1, but which He justly urges us to make our own: Discite a Me quia mitis sum et humilis corde. Let us beseech Him that, through His grace, He will make our hearts like unto His, for perfection lies in this constant imitation, through love, of our Divine Model: Hoc enim sentite in vobis quod et in Christo Jesu 2.

I.

Holy Scripture, as you know has strange expressions to signify, in human language, God's attitude towards the proud. It says, "God resisteth the proud": Deus superbis resistit3. If it is a terrible thing for a man to be forsaken by God, what is it when God begins to resist him?

We cannot think without terror of this divine resistance. God is the sole fount of our holiness, because He is the Author of every grace. Now what grace is to be hoped for from God, if God not only does not give Himself to us, but resists us, rejects us?

What is there then that is so evil, so contrary to God in pride, for God so mightily to thrust it far from Him? The reason of this antagonism is derived from the very nature of Divine Holiness. God is the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and Omega1 of all things; He is the First Cause of every creature and the Fountainhead of all perfection. All life comes from Him, all good flows from Him; but also every creature has to return to Him, all glory to be referred to Him. God has made everything for His glory: Universa propter semetipsum operatus est Dominus 5. In us, a like conduct would be egotism, supreme disorder; in God, to Whom the term of egotism can in nowise be applied, it is a necessity founded upon His very nature. It is essential to God's sanctity to bring back everything to His own glory; otherwise God would not be God, because He would be subordinate to another end than Himself. Listen to the

1. See the Encyclical Testem benevolentiae, (22nd Jan. 1899) of Leo XIII on Americanism. 2. Philip. 11, 5. — 3. Petr. v, 5 and Jac. iv, 6. 4. Apoc. XXII, 13. - · 5. Prov. xvi, 4.

Prophet Isaias. He shows us the Angels singing the holiness of God, because His glory fills heaven and earth: Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus Deus Sabaoth; plena est omnis terra gloria ejus1. In the same way St. John at Patmos declares he saw the elect cast themselves down before the throne of God and heard them repeat tnis canticle: "Thou art worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory, and honour, and power; for all things have received being and life at Thy hands 2. God Himself declares " I will not give my glory to another3. This is because in contemplating Himself He beholds that He merits infinite glory on account of the plenitude of His Being and the ocean of His perfections; God cannot, without ceasing to be God, without ceasing to be Holiness, tolerate that His glory be attributed to another than Himself. He gives us many graces; He gives us His beloved Scn: Sic Deus dilexit mundum ut Filium suum unigenitum daret4: He gives Him to us entirely for ever, if we will have it so; He gives us all good things in His Son, through His Son. Cum illo omnia nobis donavit; He gives us that supreme good which is eternal and unending bliss, He grants us to enter into the intimate fellowship of His Blessed Trinity; but there is one thing which He neither will nor can communicate to anyone, and this thing is His glory: Ego Dominus; gloriam meam alteri non dabo.

Now what is it that the proud man does? He attempts to rob God of this glory which God alone merits and of which He is so jealous, in order to appropriate it to himself. The proud man lifts himself up above others, he makes himself the centre; he glories in his own person, in his perfection, his deeds; he sees in himself alone the principle of all that he has and all that he is; he considers that he owes nothing to anyone, not even to God, He would deprive God, of that Divine attribute of being the First Principle and Last End. Doubtless, in theory, he may think that all comes from God, but, in practice, he acts and lives as if all came from himself.

Such being the antagonism that pride sets up between man and God", it is needful that God should "resist " the proud; God cannot but repulse him as an unjust aggressor: Superbis resistit. The Lord is high, and looketh on the low and the high He knoweth afar off": Excelsus Dominus et humilia respicit, et alta a longe cognoscit". Commenting on these words, an ancient author writes: God beholde th the proud from afar off, in order to oppress them more 1. Isa. VI, 3. 2. Apoc. IV, II. — 3. Isa. XLII, 8. 4. Joan. 111, 16. 5. Rom. VIII, 32. 6. Ct. S. Thomas II-II, q. CLXII a. 6. Utrum superbia sit gravissimum peccatorum. —7. Ps. cxxxvii, 6.