Thought of the Day October 11, 2019 Humility
A
famous multimillionaire, while attending a dinner, heard a discussion on the
subject of prayer. After listening for a while, the man of means exclaimed with
a sneer, “Prayer maybe alright for some of you, But I don’t need it. Everything
I have today I’ve worked hard for, and I’ve earned it all myself. I didn’t ask
God for anything.” A university president listened politely, then, said to the
braggart, “There is one thing you don’t have that you might pray for.”
Startled, the millionaire blurted out, “And what might that be?” The educator
replied gently, “Sir, you could pray for humility.”
What is humility? The very thing the man was forgetting: to live in the truth. I am what I am by the grace of God. Yes, he was successful because he made wise investments and worked hard. Where did he get the mind, knowledge and ability to do this? Did he create himself out of nothing? Humility is to know the truth of my being in relationship to the source of my being, namely God. I take the blessings I have received and use them for the greater honor and glory of God and not for myself.
Humility sees God at the center of my life and not myself. Humility sees the hand of God in my life and not just my hands. Someone has said that "humility is joyful self-forgetfulness."
"As I see it, we shall never succeed in knowing ourselves unless we seek to know God; let us think of his greatness and then come back to our own baseness; by looking at his purity we shall see our foulness; by meditating on his humility, we shall see how far we are from being humble....We must set our eyes upon Christ our Good, from whom we shall learn true humility, and also upon his saints." (St. Teresa of Avila)
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