The human vision of humility is like the human vision of love, limited. Humility must exert its authority at all times and in all places. Humility does not allow for a choice in whether or not to practice it. Humility thus demands infinite availability and infinite vigilance. It demands, a term that has almost disappeared from our modern language, docility. Docility was long the cornerstone of education. Docility contained and guided the will, forcing it to apply itself with discernment and for the sake of a lifetime. Docility of character requires assiduous training, like humility. Docility is humility's lieutenant. It is also its steward, which is not incompatible with the rank of a junior officer.
Docility is often the first step toward availability and vigilance. Being docile requires being alert. Being docile makes life so much easier. These days, being docile is the first reaction to the dictatorship of the modern world. Because docility prevents assertiveness and condemns narcissism. We can't imagine how much docility allows us to accomplish great things.
To attain humility, one must deny the ego. What resonance can such a statement have in our time? Deny the ego? Or rather, acknowledge the ego in order to better humiliate it? What madness! How can one say in our time that being humiliated is the surest path to humility? I recall Françoise Dolto's studies on this subject. Far removed from the image of Dolto portrayed by her admirers. Dolto praised certain forms of humiliation to reach a "higher" state, a state where the individual detaches themselves from their image; where the individual dominates and subjugates their image. And of course, Françoise Dolto praised this form of education for children. What was the dunce cap? What was the corner? Were these practices, seemingly from another age today, not above all an opportunity for the child to repent, and to repent in the presence of others? There is no humiliation experienced in solitude. The ego finds peace when confronted with intimacy.
"I thank God that, because of my knowledge, from the height of my professorial chair, at no point during my teaching career, have I ever experienced a movement of vain pride that lifted my soul from the seat of humility." The surest path to holiness, that is to say, the surest path to the state God asks of us, is humility. The one who uttered these words displayed a completely natural humility in his life. One day in 1257, when his fame could have swelled him with pride, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Brother Thomas, was visiting a monastery in Bologna. He does a few favors. He doesn't hesitate to do all sorts of tasks. He is available; there is a liberation of the soul in being available, in being immersed in docility. A monk passing through the monastery sees him and orders him to follow. "The prior asks you to follow me." Brother Thomas complies. He loads himself with the monk's belongings, some into the cart he begins to pull, the rest on his back. Brother Thomas is of good constitution, but the load still proves quite heavy. He works hard. The prior had said, "Take the first brother you find." Brother Thomas seemed to the monk the ideal person to help him. The monk is in a hurry; he scolds Brother Thomas, who is struggling to carry everything and move at a reasonable speed. Brother Thomas shows docility in the effort, but he also shows great docility in the face of the monk's reproaches. In town, the scene of the monk scolding the brother is comical. People jeer at the caravan as it passes. But suddenly, a murmur ripples through the crowd. It spreads like wildfire. The murmur is a name. A bourgeois man takes it upon himself to educate the friar. The brother you are mistreating is… The friar stiffens even more, if that were possible. He doesn't dare turn around. He doesn't dare face his victim. Brother Thomas's shadow looms over him, but this shadow is meaningless; Brother Thomas doesn't loom over anyone. Brother Thomas is at the back, smiling, almost placid; he has had time to catch his breath. The friar approaches him and asks for his forgiveness. He continues to wave his arms, but this time to create intimacy with Brother Thomas, whereas before he had constantly and ostentatiously displayed the gulf between himself and this brother of humble origins. He approaches him, touches his shoulder; everyone can see that there is no animosity between them, that on the contrary, a kind of complicity is palpable. Brother Thomas, fooled by nothing, an active participant in everything, replies to the religious man who had just whispered to him that he should have declared his identity and informed him of his position, that there was no question of disobeying the prior. As the crowd continued to murmur against the religious man, Brother Thomas affirmed that he was there of his own free will, that he accepted this responsibility without grumbling, that there was no reason to lash out at anyone, that obedience was the essential condition of faith. To obey one's prior, to obey out of love for God. Nothing costs anything but straying from this path; the path of the love of God.
The love of God finds its full meaning in the obedience of man. Should man deviate from this gentle law, nothing remains but the modern world. Without docility, without humility. Without love.
Leave a comment