4th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A
First Reading: Zep 2:3; 3:12-13
Second Reading: 1 Cor 1:26-31
 Gospel Reading: Mt 5:1-12a

“Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land, who do his commands; seek righteousness, seek humility,” we hear in this Sunday’s readings.

“God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; what is weak in the world to shame the strong; what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.”

“What was our Lord’s favourite virtue?” Cardinal Timothy Dolan asks in his book Priests for the Third Millennium (a present from the late Archbishop Adam Exner, OMI, of Vancouver to each of his priests in 2002).

His answer is “humility,” which he calls “the pivotal virtue of the interior life.”

Jesus “prized” humility, he says, perhaps “because his Incarnation was the most sublime act of humility ever,” perhaps “because his mission as our Redeemer was precisely to save us from the opposite of humility — pride,” the original sin of our first parents.

The cardinal quotes the saints:

Thomas Aquinas: Humility is “seeing ourselves as God sees us, knowing that every good we have comes from him as pure gift, that we depend upon him for everything.” This, says the cardinal, is the “poverty of spirit” Christ cited first in the Beatitudes.

Vincent de Paul: “Humility is nothing but truth, while pride is nothing but lying… The very moment God sees us fully convinced of our nothingness, he reaches out his hand to us.”

Augustine: The ways to God are, first, humility; second, humility; and third, humility.

Cardinal Dolan lists “some of the pitfalls on the road to humility”:

• “To think we can achieve, or merit, our own redemption; that salvation depends on us.”

• “Pragmatism.” We are defined not by “what we do, how much we earn or produce, or what we achieve, but by who we are, and we are usually closest to God when we are weakest, emptiest, and lowest.”

• “An inordinate stress on personal rights,” especially prevalent in North America.

• “Machismo”: the belief that “real men don’t have limitations” or “ask for help.”

• “A proud rationalism that makes us think we have to comprehend everything, that God owes us an explanation, and that our peanut brains are capable of understanding all there is.”

The cardinal also lists “some helps to humility”:

• Prayer: “Only the humble can pray, for prayer presumes we need someone and something,” said Venerable Bishop Fulton Sheen.

• Regular, sincere confession in the sacrament of penance.

• “An openness to criticism.”

• Knowledge of ourselves, so that we never place ourselves in situations we know can lead to sin.

Cardinal Dolan quotes the whole of Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val’s Litany of Humility.

Beginning “O Jesus! meek and humble of heart, hear me,” it begs that we be delivered from the desire of being esteemed, loved, extolled, honoured, praised, preferred to others, consulted, and approved; and from the fear of being humiliated, despised, rebuked, calumniated, forgotten, ridiculed, wronged, and suspected.

It continues by praying for the desire that others may be loved, esteemed, chosen, praised, preferred to ourselves, and held higher in the world’s opinion; that others may be chosen and we set aside, others praised and we left unnoticed, and others preferred to us in everything; and that others become holier than we, provided that we become as holy as we should.

As I read this litany for the first time, slowly and with full attention, applying each line to myself and my life, I thought, “Yes! I truly want the virtue of humility!” — and immediately I imagined myself becoming known and praised for my humility. (You can see how much I still lack it!)

The two most important lessons in life, Cardinal Dolan says, are, first, that there is a God, and second, that I am not he.

Father Hawkswell is again teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English with new insights, in print and YouTube form at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course. He is also teaching the course in person on Sundays (2–4 p.m. at the John Paul II Pastoral Centre, 4885 Saint John Paul II Way, 33rd Avenue and Willow Street, Vancouver) and Mondays (10 a.m.–noon in St. Anthony’s Church Hall, 2347 Inglewood Avenue, West Vancouver). The title of next week’s talk is Matrimony.

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