On Humility

Some Franciscan musings on humility and sin. It’s a party up in here.

Due to COVID, the writers’ workshop was cancelled. So there was no new prompt for this week. But, as fate or providence would have it, I was asked to write about humility for my Franciscan formation class. What fun!

The class was asked to choose a poem that spoke of humility as well as reflecting on Notas Apurntes and Forming The Life of A Franciscan. Both resources have much to share about humility as one of three key characteristics of Franciscan spirituality. The other two are love and joy.

Love III

George Herbert

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back

                              Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

                             From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,

                             If I lacked any thing.

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:

                             Love said, You shall be he.

I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,

                             I cannot look on thee.

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

                             Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame

                             Go where it doth deserve.

And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?

                             My dear, then I will serve.

You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:

                             So I did sit and eat.

This is the heart of humility for me, knowing one’s right and rightful place with God. False humility, which is a kind of idolatry, is replaced with reverence, awe, and even joy when one encounters the love of God. It is a Eucharistic anthropology, a description of the human condition in the light of God’s Immanent Presence.

In thinking about humility through a Franciscan lens, this poem came to the forefront of my mind. Dare we have a Eucharistic imagination in regards to humanity, to all creation? I think that is the invitation of the Gospel.

From St. Francis as found in Notas Apuentes: “Blessed is the servant who does not consider oneself any better when s/he is praised and exalted by people than when s/he is considered worthless, simple, and looked down upon, for what a person is before God, that s/he is and no more.”

“Know your place” has been used to keep people down for generations. It is a phrase often used to control, to establish or reinforce a hierarchy (usually white and patriarchal) of some kind. “Know your place” could mean something else entirely, however, if we were to turn it on its head. Our place in creation as the Imago Dei, as the Beloved of God is what we are to understand and cling to. That’s what Herbert and Francis both invite. Who we are before God is all that matters.

“If we boil humility down to its essence, we find that the practice of humility could be restated in Gospel imperatives: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ (Matt. 21.39). ‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged’ (Matt. 7.1). ‘If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also’ (Matt. 5.39). ‘If anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile’ (Matt. 5.41). It would seem that to

follow the Gospel is to practice humility.” (p. 96, FTLF)

Yeah…this is the hard stuff of being saved from shame and self-abasement in order to accept the gift of humility. Again and again, we are told to know our place and, in turn, the place of others. We are sinners, but not in the hands of an angry God. Instead, we are held in the loving embrace of Christ Jesus who demonstrates to us how to be humble through his incarnation. Humility is the remedy for shame. Grace is the remedy for sin. They are gifts of the Holy Spirit and not hard won achievements.

In Nadia Bolz-Weber’s recent post, she offers this definition of sin by Simeon Zahl. ”Sin is a way of describing the fact that there is a fundamental flaw in the human system and is an explanation for why that system keeps throwing up errors... plans go wrong, communications fail, good intentions decay and corrupt—and [as a way of] describing the fact that, in so many things that happen, there is this slight tilt towards the perverse and the cruel.” Humility is recognizing one’s limitations in such a world.

Francis didn’t set out to change the world. In the end, he realized that the world is the world. It is loved by God. It is sinful. We too are loved by God and are sinful. There’s no escaping it except by Grace and a willingness to follow the Way of Christ. This realization is called humility.

Y’all be excellent to each other.