Getting Through Heaven’s Low Gate
As Christians, we are called to imitate Our Lord Jesus Christ and participate in the Divine Life “given us by the Holy Ghost who dwells in us, because of the merits of Jesus Christ”1, as Father Adolphe Tanquerey states in The Spiritual Life.
With regard to the Christian life, Fr. Tanquerey continues:
It is the Triune God that comes Himself to confer it upon us, for He alone can make us share in His own life. He communicates it to us in virtue of the merits of Christ (n. 78), who is the meritorious, exemplary and vital cause of our sanctification.2
Thus, it is God who plays the principal role in enriching our spiritual life, and we a secondary one3. Our role is to employ God’s gifts to “live with God and for God, in order to live in union with Jesus and to imitate Him”4. The onus is on us to “make that life increase in us by meritorious acts and the fervent reception of the sacraments”5 and struggle against the seven capital sins, all of which can be attributed to pride6, according to Saint Gregory the Great.
Hence, we cannot live in the supernatural life that God is calling us to if we have pride rooted in us. Pride may be defined as “an inordinate love of self which causes us to consider ourselves, explicitly or implicitly, as our first beginning and last end.7”
Perhaps we are proud because we think we have many virtues, when in reality our actions are a result of self-love rather than love of God. Perhaps we think we are more virtuous than our neighbor just because, unlike him or her, we attend the Traditional Latin Mass. Or, perhaps, we deem ourselves as better than others simply because we think we are more talented, smarter, richer, or better looking.
Nonetheless, when we judge ourselves to be superior to our neighbors, we simply do not know what plans God may have in store for them eventually.
When Saint Paul, formerly Saul, persecuted Christians, who would have thought that God would raise him up to become the Apostle of the Gentiles?
When Dismas was committing all sorts of pillage prior to his conversion and death, who would have thought Our Lord would have directly told him: “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:42-43)?
How about Saint Mary of Egypt, a former prostitute who converted after humbly weeping for her past life at a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Jerusalem?
Conversely, although Judas started off pretty well, after having been selected by Christ Himself to be one of the Twelve Disciples, he betrayed Our Lord for thirty pieces of silver, Rather than repenting like Saint Peter after his threefold denial of Christ, Judas, in his pride, succumbed to despair.
Likewise, while Henry VIII of England was a devout Catholic in the early part of his reign, earning himself title of Fidei Defensor (Defender of the Faith) after his work “Defence of the Seven Sacraments,” his inflated sense of ego and lust caused his kingdom’s eventual split with the Roman Catholic Church.
Instead of thanking God for his birth after the public and unrelenting prayers of his parents, the ambitious French King Louis XIV, also known as the Dieudonné (God-given), sought to make his kingdom more independent of the Church8, revoking the Edict of Nantes that tolerated the Protestant Huguenots despite Pope Innocent XI advising the king not to do so. Ultimately, around 200,000 Huguenots left France, taking with them technical skills and gold, as well as working with France’s foreign enemies9. Most notably, Louis XIV did not consecrate his kingdom to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, snubbing the requests made by Our Lord Himself to Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque. A century later to the day, on June 17, 1789, revolutionaries declared a National Assembly, indicating the impending collapse of the French monarchy10.
These aforementioned examples, depicting the exaltation of the humble and the humbling of the proud, reveal to us an important motive for humility: even if we may seem to be in good shape at the present moment, we may later fall; even if our neighbor may seem to be in bad shape, God may have special graces in store for him.
Saints and spiritual writers have declared that humility is the most basic virtue and the beginning of the spiritual life. Saint Augustine of Hippo asserts: “In the soul where this virtue does not exist, there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance.”
Nonetheless, the virtue of humility presents us with a strange paradox: although one must have humility to progress spiritually, one is not truly humble once one thinks one has this virtue11. The more humble we think ourselves, the greater our pride and vanity are12.
As vanity cannot co-exist with humility, the latter which is founded only on truth, how then, can we learn to be truly humble?
To Know God and Know Ourselves
Firstly, let us listen to the Holy Ghost: “Behold you are nothing, and your work is of that which hath no being.” (Isaiah 41:24) Our own conscience can help us to be genuinely convinced of our own nothingness, for therein lies “our own malice and a capacity to commit every kind of iniquity”13.
We can learn to be humble by putting ourselves in the presence of God “as a convicted felon”14 and considering our nothingness before Him. “Without Me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) Also, “not that we are sufficient to think anything of ourselves, as of ourselves: but our sufficiency is from God.” (2 Corinthians 3:5) Moreover, we can juxtapose our sinful selves against the ineffable majesty of God, as Saint Augustine often prayed, “Noscam Te, noscam me - May I know Thee: may I know myself!15
When starting to pray, we should humble ourselves before God, as “God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.” (James 4:6) Also, when we are struggling to combat a particular vice, we should confess our weakness before God, admitting that we are incapable of keeping the smallest resolutions to avoid sin16.
By means of humility, we can practice the other virtues, as Saint Thomas Aquinas says, for humility is “necessary for us to make acts of faith and hope”17. Humility is essential when we approach the altar rails to receive Our Lord in Holy Communion, just as the centurion humbly prepared himself to receive Christ and said, “Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldst enter under my roof.18” (Matthew 8:8)
If we hope to have the peace of a good conscience, as well as some spiritual consolations that could aid us to do what is necessary for a devout life, we can abandon ourselves to humility, and God will “fill [our] soul with ineffable consolation”19.
While true sanctity consists in resigning ourselves to God’s will, humility precisely teaches us to bow to Divine Providence, in times of jubilation and adversity, thanking God: “It is good for me that Thou hast humbled me, that I may learn thy justifications.” (Psalms 118:71)
When Fr. Jean Nicholas Grou, author of Manual for Interior Souls, found out that his writings that cost him 14 years of research had been burnt in Paris during the French Revolution, he humbly said, “If God had wished to derive any glory from this work, he would have preserved it.” This is the heroic submission to the will of God of a humble soul.
Humility Towards Our Neighbor
Apart from subjecting ourselves to God, we also must humble ourselves to our neighbor for the love of God, for “pride is hurtful always” (Ecclesiasticus 10:7). Saint Peter says: “Be ye subject therefore to every human creature for God’s sake” (I Peter 2:13). Likewise under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, Saint Paul encourages us to practice humility, stating: “In humility let each esteem others better than themselves” (Philippians 2:3).
When in church, do we pride ourselves above others for our gifts of singing, knowledge or grace? When a parent or superior reprimands us, how often do we have a humble heart towards them “with a good will serving”20 (Ephesians 6:7)? Are we humble also to our subordinates, as “the greater thou art, the more humble thyself in all things” (Ecclesiasticus 3:20)? Or, do we boss our subordinates around with our exaggerated ego?
Are we guilty of preferring ourselves with the pride of the Pharisee, that “I am not as the rest of men” (Luke 28:11) when we see others living in public sin or not praying as much as we do? Do we secretly think to ourselves that “by the grace of God I have not the vices of so-and-so”? Do we expect a lot of others, while giving ourselves too much slack? In addition, do we take offense easily, getting hurt and quarrelsome by every little unpleasant word, both on the Internet and in person?
To exercise humility towards our neighbor, we can consider a good quality which that person in question may have and which we have not. Besides, we can also admit some faults in ourselves which the other party has not. Also, we must be aware that there are secret vestiges of pride in each of us that are hard to see. The fact that we do not know ourselves perfectly should hold us back from assuming that we are more virtuous than this or that person21. When we are tempted to criticize our neighbors or speak unkindly of them, let us remember Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount: “And why seest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye; and seest not the beam that is in thy own eye?” (Matthew 7:3)
To combat pride, we must root out our secret desires to be esteemed as humble by others22 prompting us to appear exteriorly devout and humble. To avoid being obsequious and brown-nosing others out of self-interest, we should employ discretion when praising others, as Saint Augustine instructs: “Lest the most dangerous temptation be found in the love of giving praise.”23
If we are in positions of authority, the insidious devil also tempts us with a type of false humility, leading us to abandon our duties of state and certain spiritual practices. Such false humility rears its ugly head when, say, for example, we have the skills to instruct others in prayer and good works, yet we refrain from doing so, saying that we “are not good enough” under the pretext of humility. Fr. da Bergamo contends that such behavior “is not true humility but weakness and cowardice.”24
The Blessed Virgin Mary—Model of Humility
Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton once said that “the gate of heaven is very low; only the humble can enter it.” In the spiritual life, dangers abound if we pridefully hold our heads high; it is safer thus to keep our heads “bowed low”25. Christ Himself declares in the Gospel: “Unless you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 28:3) and “Learn of Me, because I am meek and humble of heart.” (Matthew: 11:29).
If Jesus Christ is God, yet decided to lower Himself and take the form of man, “and the Word was made Flesh” (John 1:14), how can we, dust and ashes, esteem ourselves so highly26?
If we sincerely believe that humility of heart is vital for our salvation, we should strive as much as possible to be humble.
Where else can we find a Christlike model of humility par excellence, apart from the Blessed Virgin Mary? In The Glories of Mary, Saint Alphonsus Liguori writes:
It was revealed to Saint Matilda that the first virtue in which the Blessed Mother particularly exercised herself, from her very childhood, was that of humility…Mary had always so humble an opinion of herself, that, as it was revealed to the same Saint Matilda, although she saw herself enriched with greater graces than all other creatures, she never preferred herself to anyone.27
The Magnificat verses (Luke 1), especially “my soul doth magnify the Lord” and “because He that is mighty, hath done great things to me; and holy is His name,” remind us of Our Lady’s profound humility despite her being chosen to be the Mother of God. God took flesh in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, “because He hath regarded the humility of His handmaid.” Indeed, “the Blessed Virgin had always the majesty of God, and her own nothingness, present to her mind,”28 as Saint Bernardine attests.
With humility, we can progress in the spiritual life, and eventually conform ourselves to the likeness of Jesus Christ, echoing with Saint Paul “I live now not with my own life, but with the life of Christ who lives with Me” (Galatians 2:20). For “where humility is, there also is wisdom”29 (Proverbs 11:2).
“Grant O my God, that I may be humble, but that I may not know that I am humble. Make me holy, yet ignorant of holiness; for if I should learn to know or even to imagine myself holy, I should become vain; and through vanity should lose all humility and holiness.” 30
Our Lady of Humility, pray for us.
Endnotes
1 Tanquerey, A. (1950). The Spiritual Life: A Treatise on Ascetical and Mystical Theology, Chapter 2. Desclee.
2-5 Ibid.
6 Ibid., Chapter 4.
7 Ibid.
8 Moczar, D. (2006). Ten Dates Every Catholic Should Know: The Divine Surprises and Chastisements That Shaped the Church and Changed the World, 136.Sophia Institute Press.
9 Ten Dates Every Catholic Should Know, 138.
10 Ten Dates Every Catholic Should Know, 134.
11 Grant Ryan (2018). Know Thyself: 100 Guided Meditations on Humility of Heart, 10. TAN Books.
12 Know Thyself, 99.
13 Bergamo, Cajetan Mary. (2022). Humility of Heart, 17. TAN Books.
14 Humility of Heart, 86.
15 Know Thyself, 16.
16 Humility of Heart, 87.
17 Humility of Heart, 85.
18 Humility of Heart, 90.
19 Humility of Heart, 93.
20 Humility of Heart, 95.
21 Humility of Heart, 98.
22 Know Thyself, 98.
23 Humility of Heart, 105.
24 Humility of Heart, 96.
25 Humility of Heart, 94.
26 Know Thyself, 11.
27 The Humility of Mary. http://www.catholictradition.org/Mary/humility-mary.htm.
28 Ibid.
29 Humility of Heart, 19.
30 Know Thyself, 100.
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