Focusing on Fundamentals During Advent - 3
(A re-post to help us work our way through Advent.)
We continue our focus on fundamentals during Advent. Again, we'll ask
Fr. Joseph Schryvers, C.SS.R. (1876-1945), whose work we've
quoted many times in the past, to help us better understand the
importance of the virtue of humility after a few comments about how our
work and
our relationships at work will improve as we develop the virtue of
humility.
While many jobs require us to be bold and assertive as we preform our
daily duties, pride often hides behind the scenes, corrupting our
accomplishments. And the more success we achieve, the more pride can
assert its undermining influence. That's why cultivation of the virtue
of humility is critically important. Remember the definition of humility
we posted recently:
Humility
is a repressing or moderating virtue opposed to pride and vainglory or
that spirit within us which urges us to great things above our strength
and ability.
While our success on the job depends on our accomplishments, our
challenge will be to avoid unnecessarily "puffing up" those
accomplishments. And as we'll see in Father Schryvers remarks, to the
extent we fail to meet that challenge, we expose ourselves to the
devastating effects of the vice of pride. Here we learn the terrible
nature of pride. Just reading these words sends shivers up my spine.
Ideally, this will motivate us to continually return to the cultivation
of humility to oppose that relentless insidious insertion of pride into
much, if not all, the good that we accomplish.
“The condition of the proud man has something appalling and repulsive about it. God and all His creatures resist him; the law of universal order, which he upsets, protests against his insane pretensions, but he, in his insolence, defies this opposition. Pride makes a man resemble Satan; it imprints on his brow the mark of the beast: ‘When I meet a pretentious man, who esteems himself more prudent, more learned, or more virtuous than others, I shudder and feel myself confronted by a demon incarnate,’ says St. Alphonsus. The strangest thing of all, and the most alarming, is that no proud person suspects himself of this insidious passion. It is rare to find a person appreciating himself at his proper value, and still more rare, to meet one who regulates his life according to a correct estimate of his worth. Great interior light is required that a man may see himself as he really is: only saints are wholly free from illusions about their personal worth. Where is the man who is not wounded by a want of esteem shown him, or by the failure of an enterprise, or by some humiliation? Who is he that is not pleased on being appreciated or sought after? Who does not dread blame, neglect, sarcasm? Even the most sincere human soul experiences in herself habitual opposition to humility, a permanent contradiction between the good opinion she has of herself, and the judgment which the Eternal truth has of her.I really appreciate Father's comment about how even the best men, "in nearly all their free acts, they can detect a certain inordinate seeking after self-glorification...self is the center around which all the aspirations and all the thoughts of their minds revolve." How true!
“The very best men, when closely watching their interior movements, have to acknowledge that in nearly all their free acts, they can detect a certain inordinate seeking after self-glorification. In a measure, self is the center around which all the aspirations and all the thoughts of their minds revolve."
May this grace-filled Season of Advent assist all of us in turning our thoughts away from ourselves towards the Baby in the Manger, and raise our aspirations from worldly accomplishments to knowing, loving and serving God.
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