{"id":27708,"date":"2026-09-25T09:24:07","date_gmt":"2026-09-25T08:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/?p=27708"},"modified":"2026-09-25T09:24:07","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T08:24:07","slug":"todays-chapter-our-lady-and-the-ladder-of-humility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/2026\/09\/todays-chapter-our-lady-and-the-ladder-of-humility\/","title":{"rendered":"Today’s Chapter: Our Lady and the Ladder of Humility"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chapter 7: Of Humility (vv.1-9)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Holy Scripture crieth out to us, brethren, saying: \u201cEvery one that exalteth himself shall be humbled, and he who humbleth himself shall be exalted.\u201d In saying this, it teacheth us that all exaltation is a kind of pride, against which the prophet sheweth himself to be on his guard when he saith: \u201cLord, my heart is not exalted nor mine eyes lifted up; nor have I walked in great things, nor in wonders above me.\u201d For why? \u201cIf I did not think humbly, but exalted my soul: like a child that is weaned from his mother, so wilt Thou requite my soul.\u201d Whence, brethren, if we wish to arrive at the highest point of humility, and speedily to reach that heavenly exaltation to which we can only ascend by the humility of this present life, we must by our ever-ascending actions erect such a ladder * as that which Jacob beheld in his dream, by which the angels appeared to him descending and ascending. This descent and ascent signifieth nothing else than that we descend by self-exaltation and ascend by humility. And the ladder thus erected is our life in the world, which, if the heart be humbled, is lifted up by the Lord to heaven. The sides of the same ladder we understand to be our body and soul, in which our divine vocation hath placed various degrees of humility or discipline, which we must ascend.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As we enter into the grace-filled two weeks that include the feasts of the Holy Angels, of St Th\u00e9r\u00e8se, and of numerous other examples of spiritual childhood and littleness, we begin today the ladder of humility. Mary, the ancilla Domini <\/em>whose humility the Lord regarded, will lead us on each step of the ladder. Madre C\u00e0nopi introduces the Chapter thus:<\/p>\n

\u2018The divine Scripture, brethren, proclaims to us in a loud voice: He who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted <\/em>(Lk 14:1)\u2019 (RSB 7:1). In this first verse we already find the portrait of Mary. For the Virgin of Nazareth, conscious of her littleness, declared herself the servant of the Lord<\/em>, and by the Lord she was exalted. Saint Benedict desires that the heart of every monk, too, should be like the heart of Mary: not proud, not obsessed with seeking great things above one\u2019s own strength. It is God Himself Who chooses \u2018what is weak for the world, to confound the strong\u2026what is nothing, to reduce to nothing the things that are\u2019 (1 Cor 1:27-28). He sees Mary, He is pleased with her, He chooses her, He surprises her suddenly with the unexpected visit of the angel while she sits there silent and recollected in her little house at Nazareth. Faced with the unheard-of announcement, the Virgin\u2019s response reveals her profound humility: \u2018How is it possible that God should address Himself to me, to me who am a \u2018\u2019poor thing\u2019\u2019? What you tell me is above me\u2026\u2019 All the same, reassured by the angel, Mary says her \u2018yes\u2019 and lets God act, to Whom nothing is impossible: \u2018Behold the servant of the Lord: let it happen for me according to your word\u2019 (Lk 1:38). This is the authentically humble attitude: never to presume of oneself, but to put oneself in the hands of God with complete confidence, without resistance, without making calculations, without reserve.<\/p>\n

The \u2018yes\u2019, gushing crystal-clear from the heart of Mary while still a young girl, is for us the goal of a journey of letting go and of interior purification. For this reason Saint Benedict sets before the monk a ladder, an image dear to the entire monastic tradition because of the wide-ranging biblical echoes and the deep symbolic value which it bears. It is the ladder \u2018which appeared in a dream to Jacob\u2019 and which is capable of making us arrive quickly to the heights of heaven, to sanctity, if we climb it \u2018ascending by our actions\u2019 (cf. RSB 7:5-6). We are not, therefore, in the realm of velleity [i.e., wishes], of beautiful words and of fantasies, but in the concreteness of life. It is a ladder which we must climb every day, moment by moment, rung by rung, sensing ourselves always under God\u2019s fatherly gaze, which therefore serves as the point of departure and the point of arrival of the entire ascetical journey, leading to mysticism, that is, to the unveiled contemplation of Him Who is Love.<\/p>\n

In this climb Mary is for us model and guide. Right from the first rung we see her before us as example and encouragement so that, as she did, so\u2014with the help of divine grace\u2014we can also do. (Anna Maria C\u00e0nopi, Nel \u2018S<\/em>\u00ec<\/em>\u2019 di Maria<\/em>, translation by a Benedictine monk, pp. 46-47)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We are reminded of this mystical ladder every time we hear, in the Common of a Confessor non-Pontiff, the description of Jacob in Chapter 10 of the Book of Wisdom: \u2018The Lord led the just one by the right ways, and showed him the kingdom of God.\u2019 (Cf. Wis 10:10) The original of this text says that it was Wisdom who showed the just man (that is, Jacob) the kingdom of God (that is, the ladder leading to heaven). We invoke Mary as both the Seat of Wisdom and the Gate of Heaven. May she obtain for us the grace to follow her on the ladder of humility\u2014to recognise that the moments when we seem to be going down are precisely those in which she is gently leading us higher\u2014to be confident that by this path of humility we will be led, in the company of all the angels, right to the heavenly vision of God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chapter 7: Of Humility (vv.1-9) The Holy Scripture crieth out to us, brethren, saying: \u201cEvery one that exalteth himself shall be humbled, and he who humbleth himself shall be exalted.\u201d In saying this, it teacheth us that all exaltation is a kind of pride, against which the prophet sheweth himself to be on his guard <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":591,"featured_media":27712,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[498,73],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-holy-rule-2026","category-rule-of-saint-benedict"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vultuschristi.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Jacobs-Ladder-Dore.jpg?fit=298%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paVypq-7cU","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27708"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/591"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27708"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27709,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27708\/revisions\/27709"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vultuschristi.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}