The fruit of the Annunciation: Humility
Last month, we reflected on the purpose of our Catholic Faith: union with God. Charity is the essence of this union, but it is not the actual basis of our spiritual lives. The foundation of our spiritual lives is something deeper, and that something is humility. Humility is the fertile soil in which charity is planted and finds its nourishment. The seed of God’s divine life can only be cultivated in a humble, receptive heart, which is why the Holy Spirit was so pleased to work the miracle of the Incarnation in the womb of the humblest creature that ever lived: a quiet Galilean girl name Mary.
What exactly is humility? Simply put, humility is the true acknowledgement of reality. It is seeing ourselves as we really are in the eyes of God – as no more and no less. Humility is not having low self-esteem, or believing oneself to be devoid of dignity or human excellence. On the contrary, the humble soul acknowledges that she has inestimable value in the eyes of God, because she was “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps 139) in His own image and likeness, and redeemed at the price of His Precious Blood. The humble soul also acknowledges her God-given excellences, including her natural gifts and talents. However, she recognizes that her existence, her supernatural dignity, and her excellences are not her own: they are freely-given gifts from above, gifted for a mysterious divine purpose. Hence, the humble heart will not cling to these things, believing herself to be better than others for having them; nor will she envy others if they possess more than she. Rather, she abases herself in the sight of God, attributing her being and everything good in her to His gracious, undeserved gift…and in doing so, she obtains the Divine Favour.
In many ways, humility begins with the recognition that we were created ex nihilo – “out of nothing”. If you dare, pause to ponder this seriously: If God stopped thinking about you for a single moment, you would cease to exist! God is Being itself, whereas we are nothingness given breath by the Holy Spirit. Because God is infinite perfection and we are sinners, the reality of our nothingness is even more true in the realm of grace than the realm of nature. Original sin has left us incapable of pleasing God apart from the free gift of His divine life – the heavenly treasure we refer to as “grace”. Enlightened by the Holy Spirit, the saints came to realize that in their relationship with God, all they brought to the table was their sinfulness and weakness. They perceived the extent of our fallen nature far more than the average Catholic, yet this awareness did not discourage their aspiration to the heights of Christian perfection. Instead, it taught them to place their confidence in God instead of themselves. Humility propelled them upward into the arms of the Saviour, trusting that His Mercy and Power could transform their human misery into His brilliant divinity. In other words, the heroic holiness of the saints was not attained by their own power, but received through their total surrender to the divine initiative. This surrender is what Mary lived in the mystery of the Annunciation.
Mary was a devout Jewish woman. As such, she believed the words of the Torah and came before God as a sinner. Not yet understanding the singular privilege of her Immaculate Conception, Our Lady must have humbled herself before the Father praying, “Cleanse me of my hidden faults” (Ps 19:13). For this reason, she was “greatly troubled” (Lk 1:29) when the Angel Gabriel hailed her and addressed her as “full of grace” (Lk1:28), fearing that perhaps this salutation was a deception of the Evil One. Once her spirit had been set at ease and the Angel revealed the reason for his visitation, Our Lady expressed her humility by doing what she had done every day of her life: surrendering to the Will of God. She prayed, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38). This Fiat – the “let it be done” of Mary – is the very secret of holiness. Mary said “Yes!” to God with her whole being, desiring to be nothing except what He wanted her to be…and this yes is what allowed God’s plan for her life to become a reality.
We too possess the power to say yes to God, and God rewards this gift extravagantly by allowing His Body to dwell in us. As with Mary at the moment of the Incarnation, Christ is physically received into our body every time we savour His sweetness in the Eucharist: “there is a profound analogy between the Fiat which Mary said in reply to the angel, and the Amen which every believer says when receiving the body of the Lord.”[1] God resists the proud, but works miracles of grace and nature for the humble, because He comes to live in them. If we imitate Our Lady in her fiat, we can be assured that the parting words of the Angel will prove true for us as well: “For with God nothing will be impossible” (Lk 1:37).
[1] John Paul II. Ecclesia de Eucharistia (The Holy See: April 7, 2003), no. 55.
