The Gospel (MT 6:7-15) was on the Our Father prayer, and
forgiveness. The meditations in the book
The Better Part (#16) brought it into focus for me:
“Forgiveness requires humility …,
recognizing that you are not God. A
refusal to forgive involves passing judgment …, (but) only God can see the
whole interior world of a human being. A
refusal to forgive comes, ultimately, from arrogance. We think we are so perfect. Those who refuse to forgive are acting like
God …., (but) the throne of judgment only has enough room for one judge at a
time, either oneself or God.
The unforgiving person ends up
destroying himself in his self-righteous attempt to destroy his neighbor.”
Those words gave me much to reflect on, and I read them more
than once. It was on the third glance,
however, when my mind settled on that first sentence: “Forgiveness requires humility.” The one prayer Jesus taught us, The Our
Father, has its roots in humility. And
then I recalled that I begin my prayers each night with the Litany of Humility.
I pulled out the laminated prayer card with the prayer’s
words and looked at it again. I recalled
when I first read that prayer, years ago:
I choked at its words. “I can’t
pray for that!” I thought. But I
did. It took a long time for those words
to go down easy, and even longer before I began to pray the words with sincerity.
The first lines of the Litany of Humility have me
praying: Deliver me, Jesus, from the desires
of being loved, honored, praised, preferred or consulted. It’s saying that I don’t want my focus to be living
for myself, my ego. I am important, but
my life can’t be totally focused on me.
The next section of the Litany has me praying: Deliver me, Jesus, from the fear of
being humiliated, rebuked, ridiculed, or from having my opinions rejected. It’s saying that I don’t want to live for
other’s approvals, and I must be able to accept their rejections --- I won’t
get mad. It’s recognizing that I am not
perfect, and I must stop acting like it.
And finally, the Litany ends with me praying: Jesus, grant me the grace to desire
that others are esteemed more than I, chosen, praised and preferred to me, and
even that they be holier than I --- “provided that I become as holy as I should
be.” I’m praying here that I may be one
with the Holy Spirit, bestowing love on others as a focus of my life.
The fruit of the Litany of Humility is love. It’s the love that Jesus had, the love every
parent should have, and every community should have. The Our Father prayer isn’t a petition to God
for what we want, it’s a prayer that we might be humble enough to live as Jesus
lived, with a focus on love of others, and to always be reconciled with them. The prayer starts with “Our” Father --- I don’t
want to be treated as someone special. I
want to be one of God’s family, all loved together.
The first parts of the Litany of Humility are me rejecting
what I want, and the last praying I do as God wants. The prayer is saying I reject the
self-centeredness Adam and Eve chose in the Garden, and accept the hard cross
Jesus chose, of loving no matter the cost.
Later that same evening, I read these words from the book Divine
Intimacy (Meditation, 97 and 98):
“The spirit of mortification has …
renunciation of the ego …, inordinate tendencies toward self-assertion,
complacency in one's own excellence.
Unconsciously, we tend to make “self” the center of the universe.
O Lord, how often I have tried in
so many ways to escape the mortifications, humiliations, and difficulties which
You Yourself had prepared for me. Give
me, O God, sight which can judge events in Your Light; strike my ego, my pride,
my opinions. Here I am, Lord, mortify
me, purify me as You wish, for whenever You afflict, it is to heal, and
whenever You mortify, life increases.
The best mean of conquering
temptations to pride and vanity is to choose exactly what humiliates us and
makes us appear little in the eyes of others.”
- -
- - - - - - - -
There came a day when I was asked to use my talents to help
some people, but I discovered they didn’t want my help. The more I sought to give them benefits, the
angrier they got. My ways of thinking
were not their ways. Then the above
prayers and reflections came to me.
I was seeking to use my talents wisely, and expecting honor
(and cooperation). I was rejecting their
anger and disagreement: Because I knew I
was right! And in the actions I sought
to take, I was, but I was not properly considering them and their feelings. And suddenly this night, with the reflections
above, I realized: OMG! Praying the Litany of Humility each night ---
in the rejections of these people I sought to help, my prayer has been
answered! I have been humbled! But now that I found myself in the perfect
position to accept and humbly love these people, more than myself, could I?
It’s hard to concede a good you want, for someone else’s higher
good. In effect, I found I wanted to
help some people save a penny --- a good thing, but my actions caused them to
be distracted in anger, losing a dollar, a more important thing.
Love is the most important thing; a unity of family the most
important thing; we must be humble enough to give it and to want it for
everyone we meet, regardless to the cost of our ego.
And later that evening I read one more thing, from the book
which always lies on my coffee table:
“Son, in many things it behooveth
thee to be ignorant, and to esteem thyself as one dead upon earth; as one to
whom the whole world is crucified.
Many things also must thou pass by
with a deaf ear, and think rather of those things that appertain to thy peace.
It is more profitable to turn
away thy eyes from such things as displease thee, and to leave to every one his
own way of thinking, than to give way to contentious discourses.”
-- My Imitation of Christ, by Thomas a’Kempis (Chapter 44)
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