Dear Brothers and Sisters: As Christians, we are all expected to cultivate virtues and try to eliminate vices in our lives. There are all kinds of virtues. Of course, there are the famous 7 virtues, 4 cardinal and 3 theological, but there are others as well. Patience, kindness, and compassion may be all considered as sub-categories of love, but we may still be stronger in one of these than in others. We may be patient, but not as compassionate as we might wish to be, for example. There are particular monastic virtues as well. We are often told that perseverance is the greatest monastic virtue. A sense of humour is considered a virtue in monastic life. But probably the monastic virtue that has received the most press is humility. There is a whole long chapter in the Rule of St. Benedict on the 12 steps of humility which describes in exhaustive detail the various signs by which we manifest our progress in humility.
All the virtues, however, have one major point in common. They all, in some way or other, have to do with our relationship to other people. Our reading from Isaiah today makes this explicit. Feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, clothe the naked, and most emphatically, never turn your back on those in need. Isaiah makes these actions the measure of God’s relationship to us. When we heed the call of those in need, then “you shall call, and the Lord will answer, you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am!” You can’t see this, but I love that in the lectionary, God says “Here I am!” with an exclamation point, like he’s enthusiastic about it.
So the virtues are all about relationship, with others, ourselves, and with God. But what about humility? The Rule of Benedict describes the humble person as someone who doesn’t talk much, seldom laughs, certainly never very loudly, and walks around with their eyes fixed on the ground. This looks like someone who is closed in on him or herself, who doesn’t interact with others, who doesn’t see others.
In our Gospel today, Jesus tells us that we are to be the light of the world. How can we be a lamp on a lampstand if we walk around with our noses scraping the floor? And in the same chapter, Benedict tells us that the humble person “is convinced in his heart that he is inferior to all and of less value.” How can such a person fulfil Christ’s commandment that “your light must shine before others?”
I think that there is really no contradiction here. Humility is not necessarily thinking that you are no good at all, but instead understanding your true nature. We are all broken, we all fall short of even our own ideals, we are all sinners. And we are all in the same boat, so to speak – no one is exempt from hardship, sorrow, and tragedy, no matter how they may look on the outside to us.
But at the same time, we are all given gifts, we are all endowed with some special talent or talents – perhaps we are good with our hands, we’re good with words, we’re good at organizing, perhaps we are naturally empathetic, and so on. Humility is not about denying these gifts or even downplaying them. If we happen to be talented at playing the piano, it is simply false to claim that we are not good at playing the piano. But our gifts are just that, gifts. We have not earned them, we have not made them ourselves, we have not even deserved them. They are from God. Recognizing this is true humility. We can acknowledge our gifts, we can cultivate them through practice and perseverance, and at the same time know that we are still completely “inferior to all,” as Benedict puts it, since none of our talents can be entirely attributed to our own efforts or virtues.
Paul’s letter to the Corinthians is a good example. He came to them “in weakness and fear and much trembling.” His relationship with them depended entirely on his relationship with Christ. He doesn’t communicate through his own authority, through his own sublime words or wisdom, but through the power of God. His virtue does not depend on his own efforts or accomplishments, but on the mystery of God.
Back to our reading from Isaiah. When he says that “your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed,” this is not some reward from God for our good deeds, feeding the hungry and so on, but a natural consequence of them. Our good deeds bring us into alignment with God, the God in our hearts, the God in the hearts of the people we reach out to, and it is God’s light, not ours, that breaks forth like the dawn. Any good we do, any talent we share, is from the grace of God. When we know this, and approach each gift with the reverence and awe it deserves, we become servants of those gifts, transparent to them, to God’s light, to Christ’s grace. And this, then, is the light that Christ says “must shine before others,” God’s light shining through us.
There is no contradiction, then, between Benedict’s humility and the light of the world that Christ calls us to be. We are, each one of us, full of mystery, full of God’s grace, and when we approach the mystery deep inside our hearts, with fear and trembling, with delight and curiosity, with awe and respect, we become more truly ourselves, more truly the light that God created us to be.