Bishop Glen John Provost
Bishop of Lake Charles
Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception
August 29, 2010
22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
“My child, conduct your affairs with humility.” Sirach 3:17
I know of a man whose mother was a good Catholic and whose father was non-Christian. For whatever reason, I do not recall, he was never baptized. His parents were good to him, though, and gave him the best of educations. He was sent away to school and was exposed, like most university students, to every imaginable and trendy idea of the day. Also, like many students away from home, he experimented with everything in the book. You name it. He probably did it. As a matter of fact, he did more than most students would think it possible to do, because he was a precocious young man, more adventurous than many and brighter than most. As with parents of wayward sons, his mother was appalled and prayed for his conversion constantly. She exhausted herself with almost thirty years of novenas, penances, and sacrifices on her son’s behalf. Finally, for reasons that even he could not fully fathom, he decided to convert to Catholicism, and his mother died in her son’s arms, content that God had answered her prayers. He lived in a city with a famous bishop and took instructions in the faith from that bishop. Only the best would do. Once converted he turned all of that enormous energy that he had wasted on worldly things in the direction of his new-found faith. He became a bishop himself, wrote hundreds of letters, hundreds of sermons, dozens of scholarly treatises and books that are still read, and devised a philosophy that for at least eight centuries gave Western Civilization a framework and is still known and admired today. While foreign invaders were plotting the siege of the city where he was bishop, he died at the age of 76. Of course, I am talking about St. Augustine, whose feast day was yesterday.
I tell this little story because I think it is timely. He lived like many live today, channeling an immense amount of energy into selfish activities. He had a saintly mother. Perhaps that made a difference. For the earlier years of his life, he let his sensual and sexual self have free reign. Finally, however, there came a turning point. What a critical point it must have been, the moment of conversion, the moment of grace. He resisted it. He hesitated because he was so tied to his sexual sins. He had trouble leaving them behind. When the moment of grace came for his conversion, he could have easily concluded that he was unworthy of God’s mercy. He could have confused humility with denial of his gifts and despaired.
Instead, St. Augustine no doubt listened to readings like the one today from Sirach and drew another conclusion. “My child, conduct your affairs with humility” (Sirach 3:17). Humility for him could have been a stumbling block, if in becoming aware of his sins he had forgotten God’s gifts. Rather, he heard Jesus speak to him of true humility. “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14:11). For indeed it is the humble guest who takes the least place at the banquet whom the host calls forward. "' friend, move up to a higher position’” (Luke 14:10). The humility, taught by our Lord, is first and foremost a knowledge of self that first admits unworthiness but is all too aware of the gifts of God’s grace, the Divine host.
Years ago a fellow student in theology school reminded me of a definition of humility that I had forgotten. He said, humility was “the reasonable pursuit of one’s own perfection.” It is reasonable because it is realistic. The truly humble person is the one who knows him or herself very well. Nothing is done to the extreme. There is balance, order, and equality of opposites in everything that he or she does. How different from the modern approach to life that is extreme: desire for justice becomes revenge, sorrow yields to despair, caution becomes fear, the beauty of man and woman is reduced to lust.
Only with reasonably balanced self-knowledge can one really know the perfection to which one is called. We are all called to perfection. Each and every one of us is called to be a saint. What kind? God only knows. That is why getting to know God is so necessary. That is the Christian life, and that is why humility is so important. Humility opens the way to God, for Him to show us who we are. The guest who takes the last place at a banquet does not do so because he thinks he is worthless. He does so because he knows who he is. He will invite the poor, the lame and the blind to join him, because he knows himself.
Consider how different St. Augustine’s life would have been if his had been a false humility. He could have accused himself of innumerable sins and left it at that. Instead he saw and understood that God was calling him to a better life. He was to take his gifts that he had squandered on dissolute living and direct them to something good. Was he a brilliant writer? He would write books. Was he a gifted speaker? He would preach God’s truth. Had he excelled at school? He would leave the world a philosophy that would bear his name. Not because he was proud, but because he knew himself before God. He came to know himself by looking into the heart of God.
All the human being wants to know is that he or she is loved, and that love will never be known unless the human being knows God. How did Chesterton (cf. The Secret of Father Brown) put it? “No man’s really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be… till he’s got rid of all the dirty self-deception… till he’s squeezed out the last drop of the oil of the Pharisees.”
To know ourselves as God knows us, that is the goal. If we approached that goal, we would find out that God loves us. That realization would surprise us out of our selfishness and our false humility. It would ultimately convert us. Let us let St. Augustine have the final word, when in his Confessions, he speaks to God saying this:
Being admonished to return to myself, I entered into my own depths,
with you as guide; and I was able to do it because you were my helper.
I entered, and with the eye of my soul…., I saw your unchangeable light
shining over that same eye of my soul, over my mind….. He who knows
the truth knows that light, and he that knows that light knows eternity.