I received a few favorable responses to my post on humility a couple weeks ago. Being therefore rather proud of myself, I decided to continue the theme. A nun for whom I have much respect recently suggested that I read the chapter on humility from a certain book—but why she would recommend reading about humility to me (of all people!), I can hardly fathom. Be that as it may, I humbly present the following insights from the book In the Likeness of Christ, by Fr Edward Leen, C.S.Sp., published in 1936 (I confess I had to blow the dust off it when I finally located it in our library). He explains humility here not primarily in terms of individual instances of acting against pride, but in the wider vision of the acceptance of the human condition in a fallen world, with all that entails. In a nutshell it is this: to resent or rebel against the burdens and limitations of the human condition is an expression of pride, but to calmly accept them in imitation of Christ is an expression of humility.
“Reverence towards God demands submission not only to God’s Will but also to God’s Providence. And it was in His submission to the Providence of God that Jesus is for us the standard and exemplar of humility. He has given the highest possible expression of this virtue by accepting, without a murmur, all the consequences that followed for Him by His taking His place amongst fallen creatures as one of them. Inspired by a love of us reaching to the uttermost limits of sacrifice, He made, in the interests of our salvation, a deliberate choice on His entry into this world. What was that choice? He chose, though perfectly just and holy, to be a creature amongst fallen creatures in a fallen world, to be a man amongst sinful men, and to submit to all the consequences flowing from such a condition. He could not renounce His personal holiness, He could not commit sin, but He could take all the life conditions that would be His, were He a sinful man… By choice He made His own the lot of fallen humanity…
“We are by nature what Our Lord was by choice—namely, children of a fallen race in a fallen world and subject to the consequences of the fall. All men are plunged in error—and the best among them are simply those who are forcing their way slowly and painfully out of the darkness of error into the light of truth. Where there is error there are necessarily mistakes, suffering, conflict and want of harmony. We are all sinners—‘If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us’ (1Jn. 1:8). Now God does not will sin; but He willed that condition of things in which sin is possible; and therefore the disorder that arises if sin becomes a fact is in the order of His Providence. The reign of sin means the reign of injustice. Whoever exists under the reign of sin in necessarily involved in a system where wrongdoing predominates and where each must suffer from the effects of that wrongdoing.
“In other words, it is the law of things as they actually are that we must continually suffer from others; it is the condition of our being that we shall be the victims of others’ abuse of their free wills; it belongs to our position that our desires and inclinations should be continually thwarted and that we should be at the mercy of circumstances. And it is our duty to bear that without resentment and without rebellion. To rebel is to assert practically that such things are not our due, that they do not belong to our position. It is to refuse to recognize that we are fallen members of a fallen race. The moment that we feel resentment at anything painful that happens to us through the activity of men or things, at that moment we are resentful against God’s Providence. We are in this really protesting against His eternal determination to create free beings; for these sufferings which we endure are a consequence of the carrying into effect of that free determination. If we expect or look for a mode of existence in which we shall not endure harshness, unkindness, misunderstanding and injustice, we are really rebelling against God’s Providence, we are claiming a position that does not belong to us as creatures. This is to sin against humility. It is pride…
“It is our very sinfulness that impels us to demand an exemption from the created consequence of sin because in proportion as our sinfulness is great, is our humility little. We exact the most minute perfection on the part of others 
in their dealings with ourselves, whilst we readily excuse and even justify our own shortcomings in our dealings with them. We are indulgent to our own faults; we are intolerant of those of others. We, as it were, claim the privilege of being the only sinners in the world, and demand that all the world beside should be just. This preposterous claim is involved in every deliberate movement of resentment indulged in because others are wrongdoers and their wrongdoing affects us adversely. It is again an aiming at a condition that is not ours, and therefore a failure in humility.
“Our efforts after sanctity do not withdraw us from the operation of this law—quite the contrary. The more just we are, the more injustice we are likely to endure—as must be the case in an unjust, unbalanced world, that has swerved from the axis of truth… ‘All that will live Godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecutions’ (2Tim. 2:13)… To exist in the midst of this opposition is the condition of our fallen nature. It is irrational to rebel against it; it is irrational to expect that we shall not feel the effects of it every day and every hour of the day. It is the virtue of humility not to give way to bitterness; not to resent those wounds; and to maintain ourselves without repining or murmuring in that condition. It is thus the saints exercise humility… They look upon nothing that happens to them as being undeserved: they look upon it as being the logical outcome of things as they are. Pursuing order and justice themselves, they are not bitter when they encounter disorder and injustice in their milieu… Their resistance to disorder is not a self-indulgent giving way to their own feelings of anger and bitterness. They do not allow the disorder they contend against to provoke disorder in themselves…
“All good comes from God; all evil has its source in the instability of the created will. To realize this is to be in the truth; to have a disposition in conformity with such realization is to be rightly disposed… There is close affinity between truth and humility, as between pride and ignorance. Progress in real intelligence is always progress in humility…”
Something to think about, eh?
