We embark on St Benedict’s Twelve Steps of Humility…and
the first two are:
Recognise
that God is God.
Know that God’s will is best for you.
Benedict’s way of saying it is: That we keep the reverence of God always before our eyes. It
is what Brother Lawrence the 17th century French Carmelite called the practice of the presence of God. This way of life depends on stillness – busy
and preoccupied as we may be, we know at another level an inner stillness – in
the words of the Psalm[1], Be still, and know that I am God.
So we don’t struggle to achieve humility. It is much more a matter of relinquishing,
letting-go, learning to sit light to possessions and status, reputation, our
need to manage life, or control other people – all of which, and much more, may
end up occupying the place in our lives that belongs to God. We relinquish idols. Idolatry in its myriad forms may include the
kind of God we perceived in childhood, or the God who exists to make us happy
and make everything go as we want… for us.
The very popular God of Prosperity is an idol, as is the God who
punishes the wicked, or who takes our side against others, or who ensures a sunny
day for the church fair. It has often
been said that our idols usually turn out to be in some way a mirror image of
ourselves.
When we find that humility demands first that we recognise
that God is God, it reminds us that Jesus is, as St Paul put it, the icon of
the invisible God. It is basic to
Christian understanding that God is invisible, incomprehensible, beyond
description or definition… but that in Jesus we have a glimpse, a window, an
icon... through a glass, darkly,
wrote St Paul.[2]
Perhaps this approach is easier with ageing. We may become with the years more inclined to
relinquish. One classical pathway in the
church down the centuries has been called the Via Negativa, a way of understanding God (were that possible) by
saying what God is not. This approach
appeals to me more and more, partly because it is necessarily a pathway of
humility. It leads straight to the
prayer in which we have to become still and silent, with receptive, consenting
and trusting hearts. Be still and know, writes the
Psalmist. The eyes of your heart being open, writes St Paul.[3]
The second Step of Humility, then, in Sr Joan’s words,
is: Know
that God’s will is best for you. It
entails what the Psalmist so often taught, the humble discipline of
waiting. I waited for the Lord…[4] Answers may appear… or they may not. Either way, my ego has taken a step back, and
I am learning the essential sub-skills of humility, such as the ability to live
with, and perhaps even love and understand, a seriously imperfect world with
all its unanswered questions – and the present moment in all its menace and
unresolved issues.
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