Easter Weekday

GOD CAME TO TEACH HUMILITY
From a sermon by St Augustine 6
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Pride is the source of all diseases, because pride is the source of all sins.
When a physician removes a disorder from the body, if he merely cures the
malady produced by some particular cause but not the cause itself, he seems to
heal the patient for a time; but while the cause remains, the disease will repeat
itself.
For example, to speak of this more expressly, some humor in the body
produces sores; a high fever follows and considerable pain. Certain remedies
are prescribed to repress the sores; the remedies are applied and they work. You
see the one who was full of sores now healed; but because that humor was not
expelled, it returns again to ulcers. Perceiving this, the physician purges away
the humor and removes the cause, and there will be no more sores.
What is the source of iniquity? From pride. Cure pride and there will be
no more iniquity. Hence, to cure the cause of all diseases, namely pride, the Son
of God came down and humbled himself. Why are you proud, O mortal, when
God humbled Himself for you? You might perhaps be ashamed to imitate a
humble mortal, but in any case imitate the humble God.

The Son of God came in the nature of humans and humbled himself. You
are commanded to become humble; you are not commanded to go from a
human to a brute. He, who was God, became human; you who are human
recognize that you are such; all your humility consists in knowing what you are
yourself. Therefore, because God teaches humility he said: “It is not to do my
own will that I have come down from heaven, but to do the will of Him who
sent me.” For this is the commendation of humility. Pride does its own will, but
humility does the will of God. Therefore, “No one who comes to me will I ever
reject.” Why? “Because it is not to do my own will that I have come down from
heaven, but to do the will of him who sent me.”

I came humble, I came to teach humility. I came as a master of humility.
Whoever comes to me is made one body with me; whoever adheres to me will
be humble, because they do not their own will but the will of God. Therefore
they will not be cast out, for when they were proud, they were cast out…
Thus the Teacher of humility came not to do his own will but the will of
the One who sent him. Let us come to him, enter into him, be engrafted onto
him, that we may not be doing our own will but the will of God. And he will not
cast us out, because we are his members, because he willed to be our head by
teaching us humility.

6 Christian Readings. Vol. IV. Catholic Publishing Company. New York, 1970. p. 39.