 Hello everyone, happy first week of Advent. We're so excited to bring to you for the next three weeks a study on humility with Father Robert Routier. Father, thank you so much for coming and being with us. Well, thanks for having me back, Anne. Should we begin with a prayer? Absolutely, let's ask the most humble human person ever to pray for us. The name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, amen. The name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. So we're going to do over the next few weeks is to look at the question of humility, which is something that we tended to love very much when we see it in other people. And we do not like it very much at all when we think about it for ourselves. And so it's something that is absolutely critical. As St. Augustine said 1600 years ago that he said, well nigh the whole substance of the Christian discipline is humility. And St. John's Chrysostom a few hundred years even before that said humility is the root, the mother, the nurse, the foundation and the bond of all virtue. And so we have to understand saying that humility is not actually the greatest of the virtues. Charity is the greatest of the virtues, but humility is the foundation on which everything else rests. And so it is necessary and without humility, what you're going to find is all of the virtues are actually going to be tainted. They're going to be lessened because of the lack of humility that's there. So in order to grow in any of the virtues ultimately in charity, but any of the virtues we absolutely have to have humility. It is really that important. St. Augustine said, you aspire to great things, begin with little ones. You desire to erect a very high building. Think first of the foundation of humility. The foundations are always struck proportionally to the intended height and weight of the building. The higher one intends it, the deeper must be the foundation thereof to be laid. And so this is again, how important this is. If we want to grow in the spiritual life and we want to build this edifice that's going to lead us to heaven, then we need to have a foundation that is set on solid rock. Obviously the rock is Jesus. But when we're talking about the virtues that rock must be humility. And of course, all we have to do is think about it and recognize the humility of Jesus. He is God. He became one of us. He lowered himself so much to become a creature that Satan couldn't accept that the God would become a human baby. And then to suffer and die for us and all that he continues to do. And then to give himself to us in the form of a piece of bread and holy communion. And so again, you see the absolute humility of God. Why? Because God is absolute charity. And the two of them, what we're going to find we'll probably mention this a few times in the course here, but the height of your charity is equal to the depth of your humility. So if you want to have a greater love for God and neighbor which are the two greatest commandments you have to have a greater humility. And just we cannot overemphasize that. St. Thomas Aquinas, when we think again just looking at ourselves with our humility or lack thereof. He says, if a person loves to be honored shuns contempt or bears it with chagrin it will not be a matter of what great and good works he would perform or accomplish. He would be far from perfection because without humility there would be no solid foundation to his spiritual edifice. And so it's not, again when we look at what is important for God it's not that you did this wonderful thing or great thing. It is a matter of how much love is there. Remember St. Therese of the Sue saying do ordinary things with extraordinary love. Well the extraordinary love can only happen with that humility. And so again we need to be careful as we think about our own selves. We live in a very, very arrogant pride filled world. And so if you think about it just from an educational point of view if a person is surrounded by very uneducated people then it would not consider a whole lot of education to be considered by others to be highly educated and to be learned. But at the same time when we look at what's going on in the world that has gone astray and filled with much wickedness it doesn't require a whole lot to be able to think ourselves to be good. Oh look by comparison to these other people look at how well I'm doing and so on. Well in order to know ourselves for who we truly are it's necessary not to compare ourselves to others but to compare ourselves to Jesus because the people who are worldly minded yeah we can look like we're shining like stars in the sky by comparison and oh boy I'm so humbled by comparison to this person or that but what is it in comparison to our blessed Lord? He's the one who is the exemplar and the one to whom we should all be looking. Saint Augustine wrote would you know my friend which is the virtue that makes true disciples of Jesus Christ and unites us intimately with God? Most emphatically I say it is humility and as often as you ask me I shall tell you the same. So again we look at it naturally we would say well that which unites us most intimately with God and makes us true disciples of Jesus we would think of charity because God is love and so the more we love the more the more God like we become and that is absolutely true but in order to love more we have to have more humility so in order to become like the Lord we first have to begin with humility so that we can grow in that charity. So Jesus then calls us to learn from his school come to learn from me he said for I am meek and humble of heart that's what we have to be doing that's his invitation he wants us to learn from him and he is the most humble of all. You know again we think of God as the greatest of all but he is the highest he is perfect love because he is also perfect humility and that's what we always have to keep in mind and so when we think about this trying to be like Jesus there are so many people who think of the miracles and whatever prophesying the future doing signs and wonders and things like that but again the only thing as we just heard that Jesus actually ever called us to learn is humility that's what he called us to learn he didn't say learn from me so that you can work miracles learn from me so that you can do this and remember he wouldn't jump off the parapet of the temple and come down when Satan was tempting him to do so because that would have made a show he wasn't there for a show he was humble and so for us too we have to be careful yes if God's calling you to something and is giving you those graces yeah he's going to ask you to use them but to use them always with humility and with charity so it's not we have to remember it's not about us it's about the Lord so again the fact that I have this gift or that gift or I can speak in tongues or I can work miracles or I can heal people whatever it might be that says nothing about our own holiness and so we cannot think ourselves special for something like that if it's a gift that God has given he's going to ask us simply to use it with fidelity and that fidelity again is going to be humility and charity and to do this for the greater glory of God rather than for the greater glory of the self so again you look at vocations even within the church you've got popes and bishops, priests you've got prophets, kings, whatever whether we're the greatest, the smallest, whatever it is it all has to be with humility we all know priests, bishops, whomever it may be who are very arrogant and nobody's impressed by that and what's going to draw us to the Lord is if the priest is looking beyond himself if he's looking at the Lord rather than looking at himself and so that's what we have to be about is keeping our focus on the Lord remember when Jesus said that the people should see your good works and give glory to the Father he didn't say give glory to you because of what you're doing but to give glory to the Father so again we have to have that humility why are we doing what we're doing and where are we meeting people where are we pointing them to so again our Lord taught us many things and he did many things that are worthy of our imitation but again the only thing that he required of us is humility and that's again because of the charity and so it's necessary and so does that mean if we look at it that way that everything can be reduced to humility St. Augustine says that humility contains all things because this virtue is truth and therefore God must dwell therein because he is the truth well again you could say but God is love and as we've already said the humility and the charity are equal and so it's all the same it all comes down to that point to that all the other virtues can only grow to the degree that we have that humility now when we look at God and talk again about his humility God cannot exalt himself beyond what he already is because he is absolutely perfect he cannot increase his infinite greatness because it's infinite or his infinite power, mercy, love, knowledge but what God can do is humiliate himself now God's perfectly humble so he can't become more humble than what he was but he can humiliate himself and that's exactly what he chose to do he chose to reveal himself as humility and choose to, chose to reveal himself through that humility coming into this world not as the all powerful God but as a human baby and so just to again understand that he could have revealed himself any way he wanted he could have come down from heaven as a 33 year old man and died on the next day he chose the way of humility and so it is in this way that he conquered sin he conquered death, he conquered hell all because those are all pride pride is the root of every sin pride is the cause of death pride is what everybody in hell are going to be doing that's all in hell they're gonna be focused on themselves and it's all gonna be pure pride they're gonna hate everybody everybody's gonna hate them because there is no humility that is there so we look at it from that perspective we recognize Jesus didn't fight fire with fire power with power rather he defeated both human and diabolical pride through humility so he did just the opposite we look at our own selves and we see the pride the only way to overcome it is humility so Saint Thomas Aquinas tells us that Jesus recommended humility to us above everything else because this is the means by which all hindrance to the salvation of our souls is removed and he taught us then by both word and deed Jesus did that is and therefore what we need to do is meditate on his life on his humility if we want really to be able to desire that kind of humility for ourselves now of course again all you have to do is look at what it was that that he did right from the start you know he is God and he became a human baby so again talk about humbling himself in that way we realize then that the only real way to humility is through humiliation which is why most people don't like it we wish we had humility but we don't want the humiliation that is required to be able to get there but that's exactly a look at the life of our Lord it was one humiliation after the next and so we see how he humbled himself we also see how he allowed himself to be humiliated in so many ways especially when you look at what happened in those last days of his life now the fathers of the church tell us that Jesus because he had taken our inequities onto himself considered himself deserving of all penalties and hatred and rejection of the world and so again that becomes the pattern of true humility so if we recognize our own sinfulness that's what that's again where it all has to begin so to follow the example of Jesus is not easy in fact it is extremely difficult so think about it don't protest don't complain don't take offense that's what Jesus did that's what we're called to do and so we begin to see how difficult this is going to be for us to be able to handle this because under the pretext of dignity and justice we tend to put all kinds of hindrances in the way of humility so if we want to grow in humility but then we're humiliated and we get angry and we say that this is unjust and this is wrong and this is a violation of my dignity which that by the way can be true you know you just look at that like what happened with Bishop Strickland a few weeks ago you can look at and say this is absolutely unjust that's not the question the question is what's God doing and so if you just look at on the natural level yeah you're gonna be upset and you're gonna be frustrated whatever because somebody did something that violates your dignity or it's unjust that they did this we have to look beyond that we have to learn to look at God and ask the question what is God doing in this situation not whether this is just or unjust whether this is right or wrong because the only way we're gonna grow in humility is to be wronged to be treated with injustice and so it's hard so the majority of our hurts of our offended feelings of our grudges of our bitterness in life with others come from our obsession with our rights and our need for esteem that are strongly woven into our own idea of ourselves and so that becomes a struggle and we'll talk more about this next week but it's this balance between our dignity and our nothingness and so that's the struggle and so anyway the saints tell us that anyone who honestly puts himself in last place is not surprised when other people put in there too so in other words if you look at yourself truly as the lowest then when somebody else treats you that way you're not gonna be upset you're not gonna be surprised if you say that you're the lowest but you really don't believe that and then somebody treats you in a way that's against your dignity you're gonna get upset because you don't really believe that you're the lowest so we have to start at least with trying to begin acknowledging things working ourselves in that right direction but it doesn't come quickly or easily and so the only test and this is absolutely essential the only test of true humility is humiliation and God not in free when they try to serve us by very difficult and heart rendering humiliations you can get dragged through the mud you look at the saints and that's what you're gonna see over and over and over again the various humiliations that they suffered and that's the only way again it's just like you know I can oftentimes say to people well you can be on vacation you can be in this beautiful spot you just had a great night of sleep and you get up and you think wow this is beautiful I haven't gotten impatient with anybody I've been charitable but now I have to get out of bed so now and now we'll see what happens but so until something is actually tested you can try to convince yourself of how humble you are which of course if that's the case all you're doing is proving how proud you are if we're proud of our humility that kind of obviously doesn't work and so if we try to convince ourselves that we really are humble God will very quickly show us that we're not He will allow some humiliation we're gonna get ourselves all upset and all angry and whatever it may be but that's how He's going to show us how far we still have to grow you may be doing much better than you were maybe you're becoming more humble but we are a long way from having the actual virtue of humility if we look at St. Anthony Clare he was the Archbishop down in Santiago in Cuba and he refused out of humility when he was asked to become the Bishop he said no and it took literally over a year of correspondence between Rome and St. Anthony before he finally acquiesced and of course once he did accept the will of Rome it was one humiliation after the next first he took over in Cuba then the clergy were corrupt they did not want to be reformed they fought against the bishop at every step when he spoke against the low morals of the laity they vilified him they accused him of all kinds of horrible things and even worse they took the book that he wrote the golden key and they actually ran off special copies of this and put pornography into it and spread that around the nation to be able to say oh see this is Bishop Anthony's great mission this is what he's trying to teach the people and of course then once they found that that kind of worked a little bit they did that with other things they published all kinds of false things they published things that were falsely attributed to St. Anthony Clare and said that he wrote this and he published this and they sent it all out all over the place and it was all a bunch of lies and then when he was urged to defend himself he simply said persecution must be seen as the corrector of the bishops because their friends and subjects rarely offer them the needful reproof for their faults and so he blessed God for giving them so many opportunities to grow in humility again we can ask ourselves how would we deal with that when somebody slanders our name they put something out there falsely that's callomy it's a mortal sin when they do that but again look at how the saint handled it he didn't stand up and scream and yell and say oh look what these horrible people are doing he just handled it with humility with patience with silence and just accepted it and knew that the truth would eventually come out but in the meantime people were gonna think badly of him and he had to accept that so even if you move on there were there were four attempts to assassinate him one of them left him in critical condition with a number of stab wounds and this is what he wrote on January 6th of 1859 our Lord made known to me that I am like the earth which is trampled underfoot yet does not speak I too must be trodden underfoot and say nothing the earth offers cultivation I must suffer mortifications and humiliations and so again look at the humility of this man who was willing to accept all of this and simply offer it to the Lord and unite it with the Lord you see this kind of thing in a lot of saints St. Anthony of the Glory is another one who had extreme trials he started the redemptorists while he was still alive the redemptorist brothers kicked him out of his own order the order that he himself founded they decided that he was just too extreme he was too crazy because he was calling them to holiness he was calling them morality and so on and so they decided they didn't want anything to do with it they joined the order that he himself founded and then kicked him out and he was not only deposed from office by these people but then they lied about him to the Pope and he was made them to defend his writings and his work as the founder of the religious congregation and he was completely unwelcome Pope Pius VI abhorred his name so much that he would not even allow the name of Alphonsus to be spoken in his presence and so again here is a saint who is rejected by his own brothers and then is rejected by the Pope and yet becomes a great saint and so again you see that this is the way that God is going to work to purify us and to test us so when things happen in your life it's a matter of learning how to accept and how to remain at peace with all of these things Saint Faustina is another one she was once chased out of the room of an older nun in her convent with these words which echoed it down the hallways get out of here you heretic you visionary don't ever let me see you in here again so again when you read her diary she says in light of these kinds of humiliations when God delves into the fathomless pits of the spiritual poverty and misery then God exercises his omnipotence to exalt it if there is a soul that is truly happy upon this earth it can only be a truly humble one at first self love suffers much because human nature prevails at humiliations but as it perseveres in the battle God gives it much light in which it perceives how vain everything is my Jesus there is nothing better for the soul and humiliations to be held in contempt is the secret of happiness when God sees a soul thus disposed he pursues it with his graces again this is the saint who teaches us divine mercy and she's the one telling us that the greatest thing that we can strive for is humility so if you want to bring the mercy and the love of God you have to have the humility and that's exactly what she suffered and it's only by doing it over and over and over again as she said initially human nature rebels against it we do not like it but it's only by repeatedly doing something that you come to see the good you see the good that God brings out of it these horrible things happen and then look at what happens look at the good God brings out of it St. Andre Bessette up in Canada he was every time that he went through these humiliations he was trying to build the shrine to St. Joseph and he noticed the pattern after this happened a few times God will allow him to be just dragged through the mud and all these horrible things would happen and then all of a sudden things would move forward on the building project and so he realized the only way that the church was going to get built is through his humiliations through the sufferings that he would endure and then God would bring about a greater good in these other ways so not only for himself to make him a saint but then for the project that he was working on so that again is a good thing for all of us to keep in mind we're trying not only to grow in holiness but we're trying to do this or that thing whatever it is well there's going to be some struggles and some sufferings and if we can accept that and we can unite it with that of our Lord we're going to see that God will bless it and great good will come from it so anyway the saints tell us that if we knew that we'd gain from humiliations that we would thirst for them no one but the disciples of Jesus when we understand it this way can be truly humble because there is not a real humility without the grace of our blessed Lord it simply does not exist in the world because it is too contrary to our nature that has been so badly wounded by sin so again when you read the saints and they talk about how we should desire sufferings and desire humiliations and we think they sound like they're nuts quite honestly there was a doctor who once told me when talking about Saint Rose of Lima that it was a good thing she was alive when she was because if she was alive today they would put her in a psych ward and so again you look at that you look at somebody like Saint John the Baptist we would do the exact same thing to him today Jesus said he's the greatest man ever to live and we would say he belongs in a psych ward this guy's crazy so again you see what happens that if we're going to see the good that comes out of this people are going to think you're crazy why would you want something that seems so bad on the surface because it brings about the greatest good so anyway humility by itself is an abyss which attracts the torrents of grace and it attracts our blessed Lord himself into the soul so the more humble we are the more that God can fill us with His grace and the more pride that's there it just fills all that area up there's no place for the grace to go so God tries to give us His grace it just overflows the soul because there's no place for it we've got it all filled up with ourselves we want to be filled with Jesus we need to get ourselves out of the way and that's exactly what humility does so the saints tell us that God's favorite temple is a humble heart and so that's where He comes to dwell is in the hearts of those who are truly humble that is His favorite dwelling place of all now understand that we will never truly succeed in acquiring humility unless we actually really truly desire to obtain it and we will never desire it unless we have learned to love it and we will not learn to love it unless we realize what humility really is that is it is a great and most precious gift which is absolutely essential to our eternal welfare understand that again let's repeat that that it is a great and most precious gift which is absolutely essential to our eternal welfare so if we want to get to heaven we have to have humility it is essential if we want to grow in holiness there is no other way so that's why we have to be able to see the good of it because we look at the humiliations and we don't see it as good we're afraid of them we reject them and we don't want to do that so we need to ask ourselves do I really love humility? Do I really desire humility? Do I ask God for humility in my prayers? Do I seek our blessed lady's intercession in obtaining humility? Do I read about humility in the lives of the saints who are known for their humility? Again, it's these kinds of things that we have to look at because otherwise we fall into what St. Thomas Aquinas talks about when he says that there is a certain will which could be rather better called a wish to will rather than an absolute will itself in this we kind of wish that we had a thing without really willing it in other words, I wish I was humble but I don't want to do what's going to require to be humble it'd be nice to have the humility we just want it infused God can do anything he wants just infuse the virtue into me so that I don't actually have to grow in humility it doesn't work that way we're going to have to be humiliated if we want to grow in humility it's the only way and so that's again why we have to actually have that love for it that desire for it what I would strongly urge for everybody is to look up the litany of humility now I've been told over the years by many people, I can't pray that it's just too difficult I can't pray that it's one of the most beautiful prayers but what needs to happen is as you keep praying and these different things happen you just have to remind yourself that's just exactly what I prayed for that's what's in the litany of humility I need to rejoice in this so don't be afraid of it because it's the only way to grow and if we start to begin to see all of these different aspects of humility that again is when we can begin to understand it's not just if I can be like this or like that no, there are lots of different aspects to this and so that litany is so beautiful and again to think that that was written and prayed every day by a cardinal by a cardinal in the Roman Curia I think he was actually I'm not mistaken, the secretary of state so like the second in command under the pope and so he recognized obviously an extremely gifted man and yet someone who recognized the absolute necessity of humility and so that's something that is just highly recommended for all of us anyway, when we look at sacred scripture it's very clear that humility is a gift from God and that no one can possess it unless it is given by God however, on the day of judgment there will be no excuse for not having possessed humility because all of us have been taught that we can obtain it by persevering in prayer and if we have not used this means to obtain it it's going to be our own fault we're going to have to answer to God for that and why we didn't really want to obtain it and why we didn't when we know that this is what's necessary again our Lord instructs us to ask and we will receive when I was a kid my mother used to say there are two things that if you think that God's not hearing your prayers there are two things you can do and you'll find out very quickly either pray for humility or pray for suffering pray for those things and you will find out very quickly that God is indeed hearing your prayers and he's answering them he's not ignoring you so what is needed for obtaining this virtue of humility is to ask it of God with great insistence by that what I mean is that sometimes we will go to prayer and in this case if we talk about humility we'll say well okay Lord well kind of give me humility sort of you know but we really don't want it we sort of do we see the good of it we know we need it so we kind of sort of ask for it but not really and but even start with that even if you look at it and say well I've only got like 20% that really wants to grow in humility start with that maybe tomorrow it'll be 21 and then 22 and 23 and over the weeks and over the months eventually it's gonna get up to 70, 80 and 90% and finally when it gets up toward that 100% where we truly want it that's when it can be given if we don't really want it God's not going to give it because we really don't want it I mean he'll give us a little opportunities to grow in humility but it's not going to be a lot so as it is with many things in prayer that the more difficult things we actually have to really want them in order to obtain them and so it's not just as simple as going to prayer and kind of sort of asking a little bit if maybe this might be possible be confident and ask and ask completely with a true will like Saint Thomas said it's more of a wish than a will like kind of wish that I had it no, no you have to will it I mean even when Saint Thomas' sister asked him what's the easiest way to become a saint he simply said will it you know you have to choose it you have to embrace it it's not enough to say yeah it'd be nice to be a saint I wish I was a saint no he sang embrace it, will it, choose it and make that act of the will to be able to do this anyway, when as I mentioned looking at our blessed Lord as the example when we consider his humility and the example which he left for us we must be clear that we are not merely wanting to simply act like Jesus in an external way but rather we need to have the internal dispositions that are conformed to him as well in fact the goal is that the external actions will flow naturally from the internal disposition of humility and so that again becomes that point of foundation it often happens in the spiritual life that what we begin practicing the external actions before the internal dispositions can match them you know that's just normal if you you know like let's say for instance you're a very you know that you struggle with anger well you can learn how to not act in anger you can learn to keep your mouth shut you can learn not to be flailing your arms all over or something but inside you're still feeling the anger well eventually even externally people might not even notice that you're angry because you've learned to keep your facial reactions down and so on and so the externals in the spiritual life usually come before the internals and so that's we can start with that we can look at our board's external actions and we can start learning some of those those humble things but recognize it's really the inside that needs to change yeah the external things need to change too but it's really the internal and so that's what we really need to be to be focused on you know so so anyway but when it comes to humility that's unlike most of the other virtues so again there are some things that we can do but it's really a matter that most of the external things aren't going to promote the growth of humility in other words if we try to say well here's how Jesus acted that's what I need to do that is indeed what we need to do but if we try to do that on our own what's going to happen is that it's going to look fake people are going to realize that it's not a virtue and what even becomes more obvious is when we try to cover up our lack of humility then it just becomes so obvious to everybody that we're just acting out of pride where we're trying to do this for some selfish, prideful reason and so so it's you know I suppose you could say that it's it's a good thing for me if I'm found out to be a phony it's good for my growth and humility but you know that's you know that's true but the problem is that if our pride is making us want to appear humble we probably aren't going to accept the humiliation about the truth regarding ourselves being exposed anyway you know we're going to get upset because people think I'm a fraud or whatever and so so again this is that's where it's different there are we'll talk about this later but but there are some external things that we can do you know to try to grow in humility but for the most part it doesn't work in fact it just makes us more proud and so now we've spoken for almost 45 minutes here about humility and even about the example of our Lord the need as disciples of our Lord to practice humility but as yet we haven't even defined it and we haven't even really looked into the development of the virtue and the number of problems with its opposing vices so let's begin with the obvious what is humility St. Thomas Aquinas defines humility as that which strengthens the spirit and prevents it from elevating itself in an unreasonable manner so that which strengthens the spirit and prevents it from elevating itself in an unreasonable manner and so again that that's something that that's very important to recognize is the balance the spiritual life is always all about balance and and so that's that's the key of what he's saying here you know not elevating itself in an unreasonable manner because as we'll talk about here in a minute we have to be able to recognize our dignity and accept that dignity but keep it balanced at the same time so now also we have to be able to remember that when St. Thomas Aquinas is writing these things he's really presenting things from a philosophical point of view and so while his definition is absolutely true what we need to do is look at what some of the spiritual writers have to say about it as well and that becomes important for us because we can very easily misconstrue and misappropriate what St. Thomas says so what we need to understand what we need to do is to understand his definition in the light of what others also have taught us about humility so as we know humility is a virtue and it may be either a natural or a supernatural virtue in other words the pagans practiced a purely natural humility and even Confucius said that humility is the solid foundation for all the virtues so even they recognize this even among the pagans they understood that if you want to grow in natural virtues even there you have to have humility so the object of both natural and supernatural humility is ultimately the same and that is the good that's the goal is is you want the good and of course what we desire is the greatest good which is God so humility again whether it is natural or supernatural fixes and safeguards the order in relation to personal esteem and the praise of others so the supernatural virtues are entirely different from the natural ones the supernatural virtues are infused into us at the moment that we are baptized if one of those virtues grows all of them grow and at the same time we can say if a person commits a mortal sin all of the supernatural virtues are lost with the exception of faith and hope unless the sin you commit is directly against faith or hope so those will remain the other supernatural virtues are all lost and we all know that we lose charity when we commit a mortal sin but any of the supernatural virtues are lost when we commit a mortal sin at the same time they're all restored when we get ourselves back into the state of grace so at the moment you were baptized there was you know faith hope and charity there are the the natural virtues there are all these different things that are that are infused but there are supernatural virtues that are infused along with faith hope and charity and if we commit that mortal sin we lose them all when we're back in the state of grace get to confession they're all restored when we look at the natural virtues these are formed only after many repeated acts you know so in other words if if you want to grow in honesty for instance you have to keep telling the truth you have to keep working at this and so you know the example I always use if you go to the store and the clerk gives you back too much money and you have to think about it for a minute it's like you know no you know you gave me too much money you have a habit of honesty at that point you don't ever virtue yet you have a habit you did the right thing and to think about it a little bit you have the virtue of honesty when you don't even have to think about it it's like oh sorry you gave me too much you know so so it's just an automatic you have you have practiced the honesty for so so much that it's just automatic you don't think about it you don't have to struggle with it it just becomes something automatic and and so so that's that's the way that you know that the things are going to happen on on the natural level but for us to be able to grow in the supernatural virtues we have to cooperate with God's grace and so these are not the supernatural virtues are not formed simply by by trying to to you know develop a habit of this but rather it's a matter of cooperating with God's grace so that the virtue can grow within us and this is done by striving to practice the virtue in particular circumstances and so so the old saying in theology is that grace builds on nature and so the more that we try to practice humility the more it's able to grow so if we can develop the humility on the natural level it's going to be able to grow on the supernatural level and and so so that becomes our our focal point then is is we want to grow in supernatural humility so that we can have the supernatural charity but we have to start with building that foundation on the natural level as well so one thing that we have to understand about humility is that it will never deny the truth so for ourselves this cuts two ways and this is this is where we get to the crux of the issue first of all we are created in the image and likeness of God and being created in the image and likeness of God we have an immense dignity an immense dignity given to us by God a dignity that in fact is so great that our blessed Lord took our human nature to himself and that did not violate his dignity as God but then he did something even more and that's he raised our natural human nature to a supernatural level he gave us a participation in his divine nature so he took our human nature he who is divine by nature took our human nature to himself so that we who are human by nature could become particulars of the divine nature he's raised us up to a supernatural level of acting and being and so in this way what we have to be able to do is recognize the goodness that God has created in us in fact go back to the first chapter of Genesis and you will see the first five and a half days God created things he looked at them and saw that they were good on the sixth day he stopped halfway through the only day he did that looked at what he made and was good then he made us in his own image and likeness then he looked at what he made and it was very good that is who you are that cannot change no matter what has happened to you in your life no matter what you have done in your life you may have committed the most heinous sin that that that a human person can even conceive of of committing that does not change your nature it's a violation of our nature obviously but it doesn't change it and in order to make this absolutely clear please understand when Satan fell his nature did not change his will is completely perverted against God his nature didn't change he still has an angelic nature the exact same angelic nature that he was created with now what satan did is far worse than what any of us will ever be able to do and so if Satan's nature didn't change ours certainly did not either and so so again it doesn't matter how you want to look at this you could you know no matter how many sins you've committed no matter how big they are you can look at it from you know are you you know some powerful and individual are you the lowest are you the richest person in town are you the poorest doesn't it doesn't matter it doesn't matter what title you have it doesn't matter what kind of job you have it doesn't matter any criteria every human person on the face of the earth is made in the image and likeness of God and their nature is very good and again that cannot change that is true for everyone but that being said there is also the truth of recognizing that anything good in us comes from God it's not something we can take credit for Bergamo in his book humility of heart reminds us that God created us and that when he created us or prior to creating us we didn't exist so we have absolutely nothing to do with our being created and if God forgot us for an instance we would go right back into nothingness so how we can see then that anything good is a gift from God we can't take credit for it we can take credit perhaps for cooperating with God's grace but we can't take credit for the gift in fact Saint Paul and then talking to the Corinthians says you know name is something you have that you did not receive and if you've received it why do you boast of it as if it were not a gift so we have nothing to be proud of because all the gifts and all the goodness come from God and so the balancing of our dignity with our nothingness is the challenge but that's part of what the virtue of humility does for us if we just focus on the the goodness and the dignity we're going to think ourselves you know greater than what we are and if we just focus on the nothingness then we're going to be despairing and we're going to think that there's no hope in us and and so we need to find where the balance is that yes we have this immense dignity that God gave us and at the same time we have this nothingness that is what we can take credit for for ourselves so on the practical order it's not easy to be able to determine where personal dignity leaves off and where pride begins that's where the trouble comes so sometimes there is actually a requirement to defend one's reputation or to safeguard one's rank or to uphold an idea or ideals that that you're presenting and it may even appear on the surface that it's pride and it may be in some cases but at other times it's duty and not pride so again how do you discern these kinds of things it's not always easy there is nothing more subtle and nothing more elusive than pride and so it inspires a surprisingly small degree of horror for its ugliness and its malice and interestingly it's it's the root of every single sin we commit it is so heinous and yet the other sins that we commit oh my goodness we think that this is horrible this is awful but all the sins of pride that we commit we don't even notice we don't we're not filled with horror and disgust at these things and so you know part of the reason may simply be because you know pride is rarely a mortal sin and and so so therefore we might not focus on it as much as we do on other vices maybe sometimes we just think it's too big so we don't don't think about it much but it's the mother of all vices every vice is rooted in pride and and so we we have to make that choice again to to try to root this out because it is at the at the root of every single sin that we commit without exception because every every sin is an act of selfishness and what is pride other than selfishness it's just that simple uh so again we need to have some idea what pride is we need to see how ugly it is we need to see how badly it deforms our spiritual life and the sad thing is of course the devil is pure pride at this point and so he knows how to play on our pride he knows how to convince us that what we are seeing is good and true and beautiful when in fact it's really ugly and distorted and and and evil you know so you know you just think of modern art and all these people that just go bonkers over modern art and it's the some of this stuff is just hideous and they talk about how beautiful it is it's like are we not seeing with with you know the same thing and what how can you how can you suggest that well that's basically what the devil's doing so anyway um saint thomas says that that the pride has a fatal fallout of seven evil effects and he lists them this way so these are the seven effects of pride presumption envy vain glory boastfulness hypocrisy disobedience and discord so again presumption envy vain glory boastfulness hypocrisy disobedience and discord unfortunately because we've only got three classes we don't have the time to go through each one of these and give examples but what's necessary is to see the subtlety of the problem and the multitude of ways that pride can prevent it can present itself all too often excuse me all too often what we tend to do is think about pride with regard to arrogance which obviously is one form of pride and a pretty nasty one but you will notice that that's not even listed in saint paul's saint saint saint thomas's list that that we just went through it's not specifically mentioned obviously it overlaps into several different areas which is why it's so obvious but many forms of pride are very difficult to recognize in ourselves and even more difficult for us to be able to overcome it is so subtle that even when we begin to see it like a chameleon it changes color so that we can no longer recognize it for what it is that's it just kind of shifts a little bit so that we start looking over here and so it just shifts and we don't even notice that it that it did that and so beyond that you can understand that if pride is at the root of all of our sins then the the roots of pride itself sink very very deeply into our fallen human nature and so it makes sense then that since the sin of our first parents was one of pride the effect of their sin is going to have a profound effect on their progeny and so so satan's sin was pride and renamed sin was pride you will be like god you know so it wasn't because they were hungry it wasn't because you know this looked nice it was because of pride i can be in control i can be greater i can whatever and and that's that's the the root of well that was their sin that's what we have inherited so pride is something very very deep in each one of us and and so even people who are humble they still have to struggle against the pride so we can see that the humility in these people but they will be able to see where there's still pride that that is that is necessary to overcome so i see that we're about out of time so we will have to and take a take a break at this point and we will pick up at that point next time so the lord be with you and may the blessing of almighty god the father the son and the holy spirit descend upon you and remain with you forever amen thank you father excellent i'm such a prideful person in the club we'll see you next week god bless you everyone bless you