The path of humility

موضوع: The path of humility السبت أكتوبر 25, 2008 10:03 pm

[size=16]The path of
humility

Jesus is the path, since He is the
incarnation of humility. But for us mortals, humility must be found in the
things we do, in the humiliations we accept and in the littleness we embrace
just as Jesus did.

Humility is not about being poor and wearing humble
clothes, is not about staying away from riches or power or things of the world
since we must live in the world and for some, riches and possession can coexist
with humility of heart. However a humble rich man would not count too much on
his riches, he would share his riches with the poor in order to follow
Jesus.

King David was a very rich man, yet he was humble of heart, even
though he committed great sins, he confessed his sins to God and had them always
before him, he obtained his forgiveness and lived to love Him.
He pleased
the Lord by having a humble and contrite heart.

The beginning of wisdom
is fear of the Lord (Psalm 111:10) . Not fear of His punishment but rather fear
of offending Him, of losing Him or separating from Him. Sin separates man from
God therefore man becomes proud and ignores the law of his maker. God does not
force His commandments upon us but allows us to fall into sin so that in our
humiliation we can come to our senses, discover our pride and repent.

Humility of the heart consists in becoming like Jesus in all our
thoughts, words and actions.

We must think humbly, always remembering
that God is watching our thoughts (Psalm 44:21), so we must avoid thoughts of
impurity, envy and hatred since we may offend Him.

Our words must be
filled with charity and understanding, so that we don't offend anyone,
remembering that we shall be judged for every careless word that we say (Matthew
12:36)

Our actions must be conducted in the Will of God; in a way we must
seek permission from God for everything we do and we should seek his blessing
for all our undertakings. We must exercise our free will with humility to avoid
doing something offensive in His sight.

The path of humility is a path of
self discovery, it involves being over critical of any little thing that may
threaten our relationship with God. Humility involves a desire to be like
Christ, leaving behind the burden of pride to be free to carry the yoke and the
burden of the cross. Humility is submission to Christ which can only come if we
love his commandments. The humble man does not get offended by the pride of
others who offend him, he will forgive them and resist the temptation of being
hurt.

Humility is not so much made up of external actions to obtain
praise of other religious people, it is a personal secret surrender to God, a
very profound annihilation in the sight of God because we are nothing and God is
everything (Matthew 6:6).

In order to be justified by humility, we must
acknowledge that we are proud. After all this is the first of all sins, since
all sins are committed in our pride (Proverbs 11:2). Pride is the sin that made
Lucifer loose his place of honor in Heaven, it is also the poison that destroys
all the good we may have gained through humility.

To be truly humble we
must need God above all things, we must feel totally dependant on Him, we must
be afraid of losing Him, because without him we are nothing.

We, human
beings, are so far from God as darkness is from light, in fact our natures would
repel each other if we didn't have a bridge between us which is Jesus Christ our
Savior. Therefore we must spend the rest of our lives considering how to be
humble.

And to say it once again, if we think we are humble, that in
itself is a proud thought, because there is only one who is humble, Christ
himself who said learn from me because I am meek and humble of heart (Matthew
11:29).
It would make us humble to meditate on how little charity we have
for others, on how we have harbored thoughts of impurity in our souls to offend
the purity of God, on how cruel we have been by crucifying our Savior with our
sins or on how much we have loved ourselves depriving God of our
love.
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