Vigils Reading

THE GREATEST

OF ALL VIRTUES

From a sermon by Blessed Guerric of Igny

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Keep…O happy sinner, keep carefully and watchfully this spirit of yours,

this most fitting affection of humility and devotion by which you may always so

think of yourself in humility and of the Lord in goodness. There is nothing

greater than it among the gifts of the Holy Spirit, nothing more precious in the

treasures of God, nothing more holy among all the charisms, nothing more

health-giving in all the sacraments… This humility not only justifies sinners but

also perfects the just and brings their justice to fullness if they confess

themselves humble servants even when they have done all they were bidden.

Let your sin be present to you always and, according to the Wise Man’s

advice, do not be without fear even for sin that has been forgiven. God’s

judgments are uncertain and hidden; they are not rashly to be presumed upon,

for we hold nothing more certain in that regard than that in God’s sight no man

or woman alive shall be justified, except insofar as they justify themselves to be

sinners…

Mercy has welcomed you kindly, received you with loving-kindness. Fear

the judgment, lest the grace given you in your humility be taken away from you

in your pride. You have chosen to be of little account… Remain in that frame of

mind, so that even if you are promoted you may be advanced to greater things

still. Always take the last place, or at least desire it… Never let humility become

displeasing to you; through it you began to please and without it you will begin

to displease however great the virtues by which you are distinguished…

Humility is the greatest of all virtues, although it does not know itself to

be a virtue. It is the root and seedbed, the tinder and incentive, it is the

summit and peak, the custody and discipline of almost all the virtues. From it

they begin, through it they make progress, in it they are perfected, by it they

are preserved. It is humility that makes all the virtues what they are, and if

any one of them be lacking or less perfect it is humility that compensates for

the loss since it profits by the other’s absence.