Humility, Part I

This article is the first of a two part testimony on the importance of humility for a relationship with Jesus Christ in light of recent events in my own life.

Humility. As a 25 year old Catholic man currently in the most difficult transition of my life, the word humility continues to take a deeper meaning in my life. Since the middle of November, I never gave much thought about how I would survive in the world. I never was want for much of anything materially. I never felt pressure about finding a job. Once I graduated college, I was convinced that I had a vocation to religious life and priesthood and my endeavours since graduation were geared towards realizing this goal. I lived a comfortable life and it was very easy for me to be a disciple of Jesus Christ; or at least I thought I was being one.

However, since I discerned out of the novitiate of a major religious order those goals which I took for granted as a sure thing have lost their concrete certainty. Why? There are several reasons why and each one has to do with my relationship with Jesus. However, all of their origins can be traced back to the first of the seven deadly sins; pride.

Pride is the major theme of this commentary; it has manifested itself in so many different ways in my life, especially during my college years and those which have followed it. So much of my life began to be self-centered, especially when thinking about other people. What is his/her worth to me? When I reflect now, so much of how I operated was based off a utilitarian modus operandi. I would have denied it if pressed but actions speak louder than words; I was not living a life totally rooted in Jesus Christ. People, along with other things, were just a means to an end.

Let me be clear, I certainly didn’t think this was how I was living and I really did want to live a Christian life; I always have had a love of Mother Church, respect for the beauty and truth of the Catholic Faith and an understanding that Christ is the only way to happiness. The problem is that these seeds of faith were not being properly nourished, the demands of the Gospel were not becoming a reality in my life because of my pride. On the one hand, intellectually I was giving assent to my Catholic Faith, but on the level of the heart, I was not. My desires were being directed to all sorts of worldly and material things and as the Scriptures tell us “you cannot serve both God and Mammon”(Matt 6:24). This is a struggle for every Christian throughout our lives here in this world, but I was not doing the necessary introspection to honestly come to terms with what was dividing my attention, diverting my energies from God. My unchecked pride became entrenched in my soul. God was bestowing tremendous grace in my life and I was simply choosing not to be completely open to it.

Instead of loving God with all my heart, all my strength and all my soul, I loved Him when I needed to and refused to remove the other objects of my love out of my life. Jesus desires an all or nothing commitment. “...because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth.(Rev 3:16)” My standard of living did not help the situation. Unfortunately, when I entered formation for religious life, my standard of living became better than I had prior to entering! All of this contributed to my own choice to be lukewarm. All was taken for granted. Daily Mass, living under the same roof as the Blessed Sacrament, fraternal prayer...these weren’t driving me. I was left unsatisfied because my relationship with Jesus was weak. My faith was very external and I was rarely honest with myself.

Mind you, I was a novice and my situation became intolerable. One the one hand, I realized that the community that I was a part of was nearly completely divorced from the charism of its founder. Thus, I couldn’t rely on the externals. Secondly, with the help of a spiritual director, I began to finally struggle with God in prayer, especially before the Blessed Sacrament and realized that whatever God is calling me to, it is not to live out my vocation in that way. For the first time in a long time, I was given that silent affirmation by God that I was not called to remain a novice in that community, I had an interior peace that I hadn’t felt before. This became the initial step, the corner stone, in an attempt to build up a relationship with Jesus. This became that initial lesson in humility. Humility, however, although essential for a life rooted in Jesus Christ, can be an especially bitter pill to swallow.