Introduction to Humility
Introduction
In part 2 of this issue, we stopped with Dante and Vergil at the base of Mount Purgatory, where those burdened with pride were forced to carry heavy stones up the mountain with their eyes cast down on the ground as they learned humility. Dante, like Bernard and Cassian before him, recognised that just as pride is the beginning of sin, humility is the beginning of virtue. Without humility, that is, without an accurate recognition of one’s own worth in relation to God, one is left unable to reach perfect union with God. To put it another way, if one does not know where he is in relation to his goal, it is impossible to reach that goal. Even good actions, such as almsgiving, if done without humility can be a major stumbling block leading not to holiness and virtue but to pride and vainglory.
It is for this reason that humility is identified as the foundation on which all other virtues are built. Humility is so vital for the spiritual life that St. Augustine argues one cannot have charity without it. Of course, charity is the divine life in the soul, the very thing that gives any value to good actions and the sole means by which we can attain communion with God. All we do with charity is meritorious in some way, but anything we do without charity is vain. St. Paul tells us, “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing” (I Co 13:3). If humility is a prerequisite for charity, then we may further say, “If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not humility, I gain nothing.” Almsgiving and even martyrdom without humility—that is, with pride—is empty and without merit.
Thus, humility is the most important virtue for the monk to master, for the monk embarks on the pursuit of perfection, living in obedience to a rule as to a master who teaches the monk how to empty himself and be filled with Christ, how to deny himself and be conformed to Christ. St. Benedict recognises this in his Rule, written about 100 years after Augustine’s death, in a world that had changed radically. He dedicates a lengthy chapter to the twelve degrees of humility, using the image of Jacob’s Ladder, for it is by humility that the monk ascends to the heights of holiness and union with God.
Seven hundred years later, the young son of a noble family—Thomas Aquinas—was earmarked for the abbacy of St. Benedict’s great monastery of Monte Cassino. But in the course of his studies he came across a group of mendicants, the Order of Preachers, who seemed to better live the ideals of the religious life: poverty, chastity, and obedience. In the utmost humility, young Thomas chose to forego the sure prospect of a prestigious position to take up the mantle of the lowly friar. Some years later, Thomas wrote down a summary of theology which include a brief treatise on the virtue of humility. This man knew the virtue intimately, having already ascended the ladder, through the twelve degrees of humility described by Benedict. Through the great works of this lowly friar, the whole of Catholic theology would one day be transformed.
About a century and a half later in the Lowlands, another Thomas—this one from Kempen—was an active member of a new form of communal religious life known as the Brethren of the Common Life. Though very little else is known about him, he wrote one of the most influential devotional works in history, The Imitation of Christ, thereby serving as yet another example of humility.
It is from these four men—Augustine, Benedict, and the two Thomases—that we draw teachings on humility in part three of this issue. All four not only wrote about humility as something they knew through study but they wrote from their own lived experience. These men lived humility before they wrote about it. It is good for us to be here and learn from them so that we too may practice what they teach.
Aaron P. Debusschere
Editor