Hard-Won Humility.

I don’t remember where or when I first heard the spiritual teaching that there is no humility without humiliation. I do know that for many years I gingerly circled the idea, until I understood that humility truly is the pearl of great price, purchased when we allow God to strip away the illusions our egos exult in. Today we celebrate two men whose discipleship was rooted in a hard-won humility.

The Gospels show us the moments when Peter’s enthusiasms outpace his faith. Could anything have been more confounding when, a few verses after Jesus confirms Peter’s great Christological confession, he rebukes Peter with, “Get behind me, Satan!” (Matt 16:23). Was anything more humiliating than Peter’s triple denial of Jesus, all the more egregious because hours earlier he had proclaimed, “Even though I should have to die with you, I will not deny you” (Matt 26:35).

Where St. Peter was impulsive, St. Paul was at times dogmatic and sectarian, both before and after his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus. It isn’t hard to imagine that for every person swayed by his passionate convictions there was one (or more!) who turned away in exhaustion. In 2 Corinthians 11 Paul offers a stark enumeration of what he suffered “in toil and hardship” before he finished the race, an exhausting litany of troubles that includes beatings, stoning, shipwrecks, and dangers from all sides. One wonders how many of these sufferings were due to his own personality. Which, it must be admitted, is the case for all of us at times.

The ongoing miracle is that God works in and through our weaknesses as well as our strengths. And all these work together to give glory to God’s name, and slowly and surely, God’s will is done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Rachelle Linner. Taken from Give Us This Day.

Rachelle Linner is a freelance writer, reviewer, and a spiritual director. She has a master of theological studies from Weston Jesuit School of Theology and a certificate in spiritual direction from the Franciscan Spiritual Direction Certification Program.