The Necessity of Humility

Humility is the key to welcoming the Kingdom of God, because humility disposes our hearts to be open to receiving divine life, grace, and wisdom.

Looking to the Blessed Mother of God, we see the perfect example. It was through her simplicity, her littleness, her openness of heart, the complete and loving surrender of this lowly handmaid to the awesome majesty of God, that salvation was realised as God took flesh in her womb.

Pride, in contrast, the sin of Her nemesis, that ancient serpent, Satan himself, hardens the heart of the individual, makes him feel self-justified, and self-reliant. Pride betrays a heart in which there is no room for God, and sometimes in which the individual has usurped God’s place; idolising himself as his own god.

Such pride is manifest in those who feel justified by their own power or wealth or influence - and who feel that this gives them the authority to live however they wish. Such pride distorts true faith, leading some Christians to ridicule the teachings of the Church, and to say that She needs to update herself - to change the Gospel to suit them. Such pride is evident, too, amongst that motley crew of fashionable atheist intellectuals, such as Richard Dawkins, who demand the secularisation of society, who passionately campaign against faith, so that we can all come to believe equally as passionately in the nothing they hold so dear.

All of these presume to know better than God, foolishly think themselves able to live without God, or put themselves, arrogantly, in the place of God. It is a sign of our times that although many say they now no longer believe in God, their pride makes them all want to be or to act like God.

In this culture, where everybody wants to be somebody, and where people believe they have no need to answer to any one other than to themselves, it is extremely unacceptable to admit that we are but dust and ashes, weak, sinful people who struggle in life, and who are dependent upon the goodness of God.

The irony is, that it is precisely by doing this that God will bring us to share in His glory, the only real glory. By acknowledging our smallness before God we will become great, by accepting our weakness, we will become strong, and by admitting to our nothingness God will open us up to receive everything. If we recognise our poverty, and the fact that we are indeed sinful and weak creatures then God, our Father, will fill us with the riches of His life and grace and we will find true glory as saints with Him in His heavenly kingdom - because the glories of this world, as we know, are but short-lived, and mean nothing when death, that great leveller of humanity, brings us before the Judgement seat of God. Then whether we have sought the limelight or had influence in whatever sphere of life we find ourselves, be it in the church, or in business, in academia, or politics, or any other profession, or whether we were simply a beggar on the street, will be immaterial. In fact, if anything, the less glory we have had in this world to encumber us, and the more poor and miserable we have been, the more likely we will be to enter the glory of Heaven.