Humility

“Humility is the acknowledgement of truth”

During his presentation at our Chapter meeting on Saturday, Mike Turner OPL threw out this definition of humility. He attributed it to St. Theresa of Avila.

We all have a partially formed idea of what “humility” is; that it is a good, and what it looks like when we encounter it. However, this definition, with its remarkable brevity, brings it into stark clarity; it removes the focus on self as the sum and source of humility. What I mean by this is that since Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the acknowledgement of Truth is a signal act of humility whereby we submit to God; a submission which grows as we grow in our relationship with the Living Lord.

I think most of us intuit that to be humble is to acknowledge the truth of who we are, but how can we do this if we do not acknowledge the One in Whose Image we have been made? In order to acknowledge the truth of who we are, we must obtain this knowledge. Psychiatry, psychology, and the brainwashers have all learned that to search for this knowledge by entering into the self, results in finding nothing, and that nothing can be readily replaced by anything (the inherent danger in these "techniques" of manipulation). The path to self knowledge (and thus humility) does not lie this way. St. Thomas Aquinas said it well, as we read in the Liturgy of the Hours (and I paraphrase from memory): “Lord, help me to know as I am known.”

hat tip to Mike Turner!