Today’s Chapter: Convinced of Our Nothingness

Chapter 7: Of Humility (vv. 51-54)

The seventh degree of humility is, that he should not only call himself with his tongue lower and viler than all, but also believe himself in his inmost heart to be so, humbling himself, and saying with the prophet: “I am a worm and no man, the shame of men and the outcast of the people: I have been exalted, and cast down, and confounded.” And again: “It is good for me that Thou hast humbled me, that I may learn Thy commandments.”

With the 6^th and 7^th Degrees of humility a turning point is reached. The first half of the ladder, as it were, aims at cutting away self-will and so purifying the monk’s heart. The fear of God which is impressed in the 1^st Degree leads him to realise that he must turn away from his own will (2^nd Degree) and, as a result, submit to obedience to a superior (3^rd Degree), with all of the hard things and injuries this may involve (4^th Degree), not hiding from his superior his struggles and failures in this obedience (5^th Degree). All of this is good, but it is still coming from the outside, as it were. Because his will is proud and rebellious, the monk needs the goad of fear, the hard teacher of obedience, to keep him from going astray.

In the 6^th Degree, this began to change, for in the 6^th Degree the monk not only submits his will to others, but begins to think differently about things. He not only accepts what is lowest and most contemptible, but he is said to be ‘content’ with it. He not only lets himself be treated as a bad and worthless labourer, but is said to regard himself as such. From what might at first have been a reluctant submission of his will, the monk has moved to a change of perspective about things, and above all about himself. Obedience and the struggles it involves have led him to self-knowledge.

The 7^th Degree completes this inner conversion. Saint Benedict stresses even more forcefully here that the monk’s professions of his lowliness are not just to be said outwardly, but believed inwardly. The monk has finally been truly convinced in his heart about where he rightly stands in relation to God and others. He not only is happy with the lowest place, but he believes that he deserves it. This conviction, now interiorised, will now animate the remaining degrees of humility, which will describe how this conviction of his nothingness, acquired in the hard school of obedience, begins from the inside out to shape his conduct (8^th Degree), his speech and laughter (9^th-11^th Degrees), and even his bodily bearing (12^th Degree).

This conviction of our lowliness which we acquire in the school of obedience was, as it were, connatural to the Blessed Virgin. We might think that she, the Immaculate, could not truthfully have believed herself to be lower and viler than all. Yet, even if she realised how much holier she was than everyone around her, she would have realised that it was all the fruit of God’s utterly gratuitous gift. She certainly did not seem to be expecting to be someone great in God’s plan—so much so that when Saint Gabriel greets her as ‘full of grace’, she is troubled and confused, and when told that she will be the Mother of the Messiah, far from immediately rejoicing in this dignity, she seems to think that there must be some mistake: ‘How shall this be, since I know not man?’ When Elizabeth proclaims her blessed among women, she responds with praise of God—yes, she says, all generations will call her blessed, but only because God, Who alone is mighty and holy, has done great things for her in her lowliness.

This conviction which Our Lady already possessed would have grown deeper and deeper as she came to know her Son, and as she suffered with Him. As her Son, Whose human soul knew all things by virtue of its Hypostatic Union with the Word, nonetheless learned by experience what it was to be obedient in His Passion, so Mary’s humility would have grown even deeper as she endured the Passion with Him, and she too could say, ‘It is good for me that Thou hast humbled me, so that I may learn Thy justifications.’ May we, to whom such humility does not come naturally, allow ourselves to learn in the school of obedience the inner conviction of our true state before God—utterly poor, and yet deeply loved—the conviction which lived always in her Immaculate Heart.