Growing in Our Humility

Dear Friends,

Among the best insights into human life in our times is that self-esteem is essential to living fully. You and I need to know, accept and, yes, be glad about ourselves. False modesty and self-deprecation are unhealthy as well as untrue.

To recognize ourselves for who we are and what we are, to value ourselves, are all part of humility, a theme in today’s readings.

The American architect Frank Lloyd Wright was on the stand as a witness in a lawsuit. The dialogue went like this:

“What is your name?”
“Frank Lloyd Wright.”
“What is your occupation?”
“World’s greatest architect.”
“You’re not very humble, are you?”
“Sir, I am under oath.”

While self-confidence is a part of humility, self-promotion at someone else’s expense is not.

That’s the rub. That’s what the guest in Jesus’ story is doing – advancing himself at the expense of others.

Preoccupation with one’s status or position in relationship to others is not just a modern phenomenon. In Jesus’ day, the question of where to sit at a table was no idle matter. One’s honor, social significance and worth were at stake. But Jesus places no value on jockeying for position. Instead, He says to take a lower place. Let the master of the house be the one who invites his guest to a higher place if he so chooses.

How do we grow in humility? For one thing, we can make room in our lives for people who can teach us unexpected lessons. Missionaries who have gone off to foreign lands, fully expecting to bring great insight and value to the poor, often realize how much these people who welcomed them also taught them about life and God. But we don’t have to go off to a foreign land to gain insight from people of other nations. I remember a friend telling me about his own personal reluctance to engage a Pakistani cab driver in a long stop-and-go drive in New Your City. Reluctantly but truly, my friend learned much for his own life in that hour they were stuck together in traffic. Make room for people who can teach us unexpected lessons.

We grow in humility when we make room for new consciousness. It feels so secure to believe that we have the answers to life’s deepest questions sewn up. Or to believe that how we are and what we think is exactly right and we don’t have to change one iota. Humility means letting go of our absolutes about ourselves and our world.

Finally, we grow in humility when we make room for the child in us. As we grow up, we tend to leave behind in inquisitiveness of childhood, our need to belong, our sense of wonder. When we rediscover the child within, that child can lead us to see a new face of God and experience a new connectedness with all people, all creation.

Unlike Frank Lloyd Wright, we are not under legal oath to name the truth. Like him, we stand before God, before one another and before ourselves and are asked to name the truth of our lives.

What do we need to make room for?

~Sister Joan Sobala