Now we will see what we can make of numbers 5 and 6 of St
Benedict’s Twelve Steps of Humility. Sister Joan Chittister’s helpful headings
are:
Acknowledge
faults and strip away the masks.
Be content with less than the best.
The first is something we come back to constantly in any
case, in contemplative life and prayer.
It is the grace to be honest with ourselves, about ourselves; learning
to smile, often ruefully, at ourselves. This
is a clear requirement of humility. For some
it is a discovery that, with considerable relief, they can cease taking
themselves so seriously without their world collapsing – the discovery that their
emotions, reactions, opinions, are not the pillars of the universe. The processes of contemplative prayer draw us
back not only to the present moment, but also out of our fantasies and
dream-worlds and the ways we retreat from reality, or bother what other people are
thinking of us… and into what St Paul calls a sober estimate of ourselves,
spiced if possible with a sense of humour and kindly perspective about what we
did badly and got wrong, and gratitude for all we got right. It is a kind and honest humility,
gentle, wise and understanding about ourselves, and about other people we know. It walks hand in hand with our relinquishing
of fear.
Then comes the one you’ve been waiting for, Step 6: Be content with less than the best. Of course it runs counter to all we are
told these days – never settle for less than the best… I gave it my best… all
you can do is your best… no prizes for coming second… only excellence will
do… the constant theme on my school
reports: Could have done better. Now
we hear Benedict counselling: Be content
with less than the best. What Benedict
actually says is that we make peace with inevitabilities. As we know well, life is often unfair, people
suffer undeservedly, or go through their lives having always to make the best
of a bad deal. I think Benedict does
lean towards the obsequious here, rather too much for my taste. One of Isaac Watts’s less successful
evangelical hymns, which never failed to rattle my mother and ruin her Sunday,
extolled what the Saviour had done “for such a worm as I”. This is Uriah Heep type humility, which
Dickens excoriates in David Copperfield.
However, I believe there is an important point here. The “Serenity Prayer” captures it in part: …accept those things I cannot change… change
those things I can. The aim of
spiritual growth and depth is not to achieve a perfect life in perfect
surroundings among perfect people. It is
to be free to love and serve God, and God’s world, here and now and as things
are. This humility is a gift, it is a
kind of freedom – it is never put on like clothes or a mask, it is either growing
there, inwardly and heartfelt, or it is not.
In the prayer of silence and stillness we are open to grace. The hard work in our prayer is the humble work
of returning to the rhythm of the mantra, loving the necessity to be still and wait,
finding the willingness to let go of what we think we need to hang on to. This level of consent requires courage, no
doubt… but I prefer to talk about faith.
Each step beyond what we think we know and can control is a step
of faith. And it is what humility asks
of us… not heroics, not miracles, not revelations… simply one step at a time.
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