The Monastic Preacher

My Photo
Name:
Location: Chicago, Illinois, United States

The Roman Catholic Monastery of the Holy Cross was founded in 1989 and became a Benedictine house of the Subiaco Congregation in 2000. We follow a traditional contemplative life, chanting Psalms seven times a day and singing Gregorian chant at the Eucharist. We do this in a distinctive way by living our monastic life on the South Side of Chicago. Prior Peter, the author of this blog, was appointed Prior in August of 2004.

Sunday, September 02, 2007

On Humility (22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time - Dom Peter)

Apart from the chastity practiced by Christians, there is hardly a more controversial Christian virtue than humility. This has always been the case, but is probably more so today, for reasons that will give shortly. Before diagnosing the situation, let us first hear from one of the great modern opponents of Christian humility, Freiderich Nietzsche. In about 1885, he wrote, in Beyond Good and Evil: “Christianity has been the most calamitous kind of arrogance yet.” This is because the virtue of humility and the care and concern for the poor enjoined by our Lord, according to the German philologist, “break the strong…cast suspicions on the joy in beauty, bend everything haughty, manly, conquering, domineering, all the instincts characteristic of the highest and best-turned-out type of ‘man’ into unsureness, agony of conscience, [and] self-destruction.” Now some of this language is so strong as to sound like a parody even of principled opposition to the Church. But we should not dismiss it too quickly.

So I pose a question: Do we Christians in fact do this? Do we, by embracing humility lay the ground work for the destruction of what is best in humanity? Unfortunately, I must answer that many of us do indeed. The good news is that this is more a consequence of our living in the modern world than of being Christian. To explain what I mean by this, let me turn to another insightful commentator on the modern West, the late novelist Kurt Vonnegut. His short story Harrison Bergeron, begins, “The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else.” In the story, anyone above average is burdened with a government-issued handicap. The parents of Harrison are watching television, and there they see ballerinas “burdened with sash-weights…and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in.”

This would indeed be the problem that Nietzsche diagnosed: a preference for the weak and condemnation of the strong, but is it motivated by a desire for humility, or by envy? In this case, the problem lies not in the Christian virtue of humility, but in aspects of the modern ideologies of democracy and socialism.

So if we are to be truly humble as Christians, it should not be after the form of those who treat the gifts of life as bad because God distributed them in a way not to our liking. Phrased as such, this is clearly presumption and not humility. But it is a danger in the modern Church, precisely because it is a danger in our society. Even in monasteries, a man can work for years at a craft at a high level and receive no encouragement from his brothers. I glimpsed this while visiting another monastery. I happened to be seated across from a monk who is a scholar of Gregorian chant. Seizing the opportunity, I asked him some questions, but when he attempted a reply, a monk sitting to my right made noises indicating that such rarified discussion was out of bounds, as if it were more virtuous to discuss the divorce of some celebrity (which is where such conversations often stray). By insisting that we reduce the conversation to the lowest common denominator, the brother was, in my opinion, contributing little to the humility of the chant scholar, but instead taking the first place at table of democratic righteousness.

In the opening prayer of today’s Mass, the Church’s liturgy invited us to ask God to bring to perfection the gifts He has given. How can we perfect our gifts if we are trying to shame each other into pretending that we don’t have any? That sometimes special talents bring about pride is not disputed, but the idea that only excellence causes pride is an insult to the Creator. It was through the devil’s envy that death entered the world, and it is possible to be proud in any station of life, just as it is possible to be the Son of God Himself and be meek and humble of heart.

Humility, of course, holds a central place in the Rule of St. Benedict. The Chapter on Humility towers over every other chapter and has been the subject of whole book-length commentaries. There are two particularly excruciating steps to this ladder, both of which require a pitched spiritual battle in the heart. In the fourth step, we read that under “difficult, unfavorable, or even unjust conditions, [the monk’s] heart quietly embraces suffering and endures it without weakening or seeking to escape.” The way of the world is to locate the problem outside ourselves and, when we are in a good mood, pronounce ourselves superior to it by offering sage advice, and when we are irritated to lash out against difficult and unjust situations. While understandable, this will stunt our growth in humility because a ready judgment freezes us into our own limited perspective, whereas patience gradually opens us to God’s solutions. Let me complete this observation by noting that there can hardly be quiet in the heart if there is not quiet in one’s life. Thus perpetual busyness is also an escape from the hard work of humility. Workaholism and fussiness substitute our own energy for God’s wisdom.

If that all sounds difficult and inhumane, how about step seven? In this we are exhorted “not only to admit with [the] tongue,” but also be convinced in our hearts that we are inferior to all and of less value. Surely this is the kind of groveling that drew Nietzsche’s ire. Let us first recognize what sort of thing this humility is not, and then embrace it for what it is, a celebration of human solidarity.

What St. Benedict is not endorsing is fawning flattery. St. Basil the Great taught that it is not humility to take the lowest place if we do this in disobedience. Put in another more up-to-date light, I had a teacher who once said, “If God gives you a Stradivarius violin, it’s a sin to use it to flip burgers.” Sometimes we make this mistake by replacing appreciation of others with that peculiar modern pseudo-virtue “Niceness.” People who want to sell you something useless can be very nice in the usual sense of exuding a facile kindness and painless friendliness, but the goal is not communion with the other person, but acquisition of their money.

This opens the door for a true appreciation of humility as leading to communion and not self-degrading isolation. The good zeal required of a monk involves being the first to show respect—real respect again, not a showy gift of attention that aggrandizes the giver, but honest to goodness respect. Real humility requires doing what we judge better for others. How can we truly assess what will benefit another if we do not take the time to know and appreciate that brother? If we not only fail to show the ‘greatest patience [in supporting a brother’s] weaknesses of body or behavior,’ but even actively criticize his strengths in the name of fairness and equality?

On the other hand, when I honor my brother, his gifts become mine. When we are in communion with one another, we all share in the goods that God has given. Every human life, in fact, is a gift from God, and by learning to be attentive to my brother, especially the needy, the breadth of God’s generosity increases by leaps and bounds. And the greater God becomes in our lives, the lesser we become. We see God’s glory reflected in each person we meet, created in God’s image, and we can honestly come to a place where we simply take the lowest place, with the poor and the lame, awaiting with joyful hope the resurrection of the righteous and the triumph of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory and power forever. Amen.