Friday, August 3, 2012

Humility As Truth, Part I

We Are Not Divine



In the Garden of Eden the first temptation succeeded because it promised that we should become gods.  This desire is the essence of pride.  We want to deny our earthly origins with their consequences of vulnerability, weakness, labor, social constraint, and limitation.  We refuse to be satisfied with a medium level of gratification.  We demand a high level of pleasure, total freedom, power, a good reputation and a complete absence of irritants.  And we want them now.  Whatever gnaws away at our capicity to be happy in the restricted possibilities normal human life offers may be labeled as the opposite of humility, that is "pride."  We demand from others what they cannot possibly give us.  We are resentful that they do not give us all that we want.  Humility, on the other hand, leads us to find contentment in the ordinary, obscure, and laborious occupations that constitute our daily existence.

from A Guide to Living in the Truth:  Saint Benedict's Teaching on Humility
by Michael Casey

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