Humble of Heart
Gospel Reflection for December 11th, 2024
“Jesus said to the crowds: "Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light." Matthew 11:28-30.
The fact that today’s Gospel is very short should not cause us to throw it to the side. These few verses open up a spiritual treasury in reference to the Interior Life. I have written in the past, here, about humility being the foundation of the Interior Life, following the great spiritual writers. To that end, I want to highlight a short part of that article here:
“…Throughout the entirety of the Christian tradition, we find that humility is the basis of the spiritual life. The reason for this is because it casts out the sin of pride which forms the root of all other sins. This is why Our Lord speaks so often on the need for humility. He is encouraging His followers to cast out the sin of pride and to be humble like Him. But this is only the beginning. Repressing pride is not the only function of humility, it serves to orient the soul to God so that it sees itself as it truly is before God. If repression of pride were its only function, then Our Lord and Our Lady would not be perfections of humility since there was no need to repress pride in them since it did not exist in them. Instead, we find a virtue that ultimately shows the soul its true position compared to God. [Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange] writes:
“[Humility’s] essential act consists in abasing ourselves before God and before what is of God in every other creature. To abase ourselves before the Most High is to recognize, not only in a speculative but in a practical manner, our inferiority, littleness, and indigence, manifest in us even though we are innocent and once we have sinned, it consists in recognizing our wretchedness.”1
What should be noticed here is that humility is not solely toward God. It is certainly toward God first in that we recognize that we are immensely small before Him. He is ipsum esse subsistens, Being Itself. We exist because He has in His goodness caused us and continues to hold us in that being. As a result of this, humility also moves us to recognize the likeness of God in our neighbor and thus causes in us a desire for them to be preferred over us.
Humility inclines us toward the truth that God is far greater than we can ever be and that there is an infinite distance between God and creature. Thus, “the more this distance appears to us in a living and concrete manner, the more humble we are.”2 Practically speaking, the higher the soul ascends in the spiritual life, the more this infinite distance is apparent to it. Thus, the higher we get and the closer we get to God, the more the abyss grows in our estimation. This truly places the soul at an absolute reliance on God. This is the purpose of it. The more reliant we are on God the more we know that we cannot cross this infinite abyss. We need Him to come get us. This is the nature of the interior life. We do not ascend through the interior life of our own will. We do not determine ourselves and say, “I will tackle the dark night of the senses today!” No! This type of thinking would be spiritual pride. Instead, it is an act of grace that moves us through the stages of the interior life. Our correspondence to that grace will bring us up this mountain to the glory of God. But it must be understood as a work of God, first. St. Paul beautifully speaks to this:“What have you that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift.” 1 Cor. 4:7 RSVSCE…”
The great spiritual writers, summed up by Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange place humility at the heart of the ascent of the Spiritual Life. This is why Our Lord tells us in this Gospel to learn from Him. His yoke is easy, not because it is a simple burden or because anyone of their own power can do it, but because, if we rely on Christ as humility requires of us, we realize that we cannot do anything without Him.3 It is the virtue of humility that moves us to go to Christ and ask for the grace to carry His yoke, and in that, we may attain eternal life.
Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The Three Ages of the Interior Life, 118.
Ibid.
Cf. John 15:5.