(ANS – Rome) – Humility is a fundamental virtue of Christianity and an essential characteristic of true devotees of the Heart of Jesus. The Salesian Bulletin discussed this virtue in July 1886, examining in depth the devotion to the Sacred Heart that was so dear to Don Bosco and which he promoted in so many ways.
This text, edited by Fr. John Bonetti, begins with a quote from Cardinal Gaetano Alimonda: ‘Jesus Christ carved his own image into Christianity: humility.’ This virtue, unknown to paganism, was introduced by the Gospel and witnessed by Christ throughout his life, from the Incarnation to the Cross.
In the text, the author also questions the real humility of illustrious pre-Christian thinkers, such as Socrates and Diogenes, identifying in them perhaps refined forms of pride. Christian humility, on the other hand, is authentic, divine, and finds its full expression in the Heart of Jesus, who annihilated himself out of love, embracing the poorest human condition.
St. Francis de Sales, one of the main promoters of devotion to the Sacred Heart and patron saint of the Congregation founded by Don Bosco, is again recalled to remind us how he wanted humility to be the foundation of the Order he founded, the Daughters of the Visitation. In fact, he invited his religious to consider themselves dead to the world, hidden with Christ in God, and to live in self-annihilation in faith and love. But this call to humility, the author continues, does not concern only religious, but every Christian, since, as St. Paul says, everyone must strip themselves of the old man to put on the new one.
Humility is practiced in two ways: in the intellect and in the will. The first consists in recognizing one’s nothingness before God and in submitting reason to faith, accepting that everything in the world – life, death, intellect, love – is shrouded in mystery. The second, more difficult, concerns action: putting into practice what one knows to be true and good, overcoming the rebellion of the will and the tendency to sin.
Christ, although he was God, recognized in the Father the source of all good and lived a whole life of active humility, inviting everyone to learn from him, who was meek and humble of heart. Humility was the instrument with which God brought about creation and redemption; through it, Mary became the mother of the Word; through it, the saints participate in the divine nature.
The text concludes with a clear invitation: devotion to the Sacred Heart is not a vague sentiment, but implies knowledge, love, and imitation. Only those who make humility the rule of their lives, in their thoughts and actions, can consider themselves true devotees of the Heart of Jesus.
The full text of the article written for the 1886 Salesian Bulletin is available in the original Italian version of the time, below.
ENGLISH TRANSLATION:
The Heart of Jesus and Humility
Jesus Christ, in the great work of Christianity, sculpted his entire physiognomy; this is humility. These sublime words, addressed years ago to the Genoese in one of her very learned Conferences Alimonda, sublime words that reveal in themselves the character, as well as the duties of the true devotee of the Heart of Jesus. Because this character and these duties are summarized and fulfilled in the practice especially of that one of the virtues of the Divine Redeemer, which he loved as the dearest thing, and he loved it not only with words inculcating it, but he loved it with examples and with works making it the constant rule of his whole life and placing it at the base, at the foundation of the new religion.
Humility as a virtue was absolutely unknown to paganism; all the literature of Greece and pagan Rome does not have a single word that means it. And it is natural, because the idea was missing; those two people absorbed in the clamorous external life were incapable of understanding the greatness and the sweetness of the interior life, which is founded on humility. The examples, which are adduced of Socrates and Diogenes, are far from corresponding to the Christian and only true concept of humility, since the very humble Socrates, according to Rousseau himself, showed and pretended to be humble in order to gain praise from people with false modesty, thus sinning of very fine pride, and the ragged Diogenes, in what he posed as a despiser of the sumptuous greatness of Plato, pleased himself with the subtlest pride in his cynical impudence. There is no greater pride, exclaims in this regard that very high genius of St. Augustine, than the simulation of humility. Simulatio humilitatis major superbia est. Humility, therefore, it cannot be repeated too often, is a precious gem, but a gem of our holy religion; it is a flower, but a flower transplanted by the hand of God into the garden of the Church and watered by the blood of Jesus Christ; it is a fruit, but a fruit grown on the great tree of Christianity.
And the practice of humility is precisely the goal that, immediately after faith and love for the Eucharist, that ardent and enlightened promoter of devotion to the Sacred Heart, our St. Francis de Sales, proposed to himself. He, in fact, placed humility at the base and foundation of the Order he instituted and he wanted the Daughters of the Visitation to live by the spirit of abnegation and annihilation of Jesus, whose hiddenness not only from the eyes, but from the very intellects, lasted a good 28 years, interrupted only once by a flash, that of his conversation with the doctors of the Temple and of the divine response to Mother Mary. You are dead, the Holy Bishop of Geneva said and wrote with the words of St. Paul to the Daughters of the Visitation, you are dead and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Mortui enim estis, et vita vestra est abscondita cum Christo in Deo. That is to say, you are dead to earthly things, to the world, to the flesh, to earthly affections, and the supernatural spiritual life, which you now live, hidden in God with Jesus Christ, who is the principle and source of this life, is not intelligible except to faith and to the love of God, because it consists precisely in the knowledge and love of God. And so that these words, together with the meaning they contain, would remain deeply engraved in the mind and heart, he wanted them to be pronounced and as if left as a permanent memory at the most solemn moment of life, that is, that of religious profession.
Nor should it be said that these words, these maxims, which Saint Francis addressed to the Daughters of the Visitation, are valid only for religious men and women. No, never; St. Paul, from whom he takes them, addressed them indiscriminately to all the Christians of Colossae and through them to all the Christians of the world, as those who, resurrected with Jesus Christ, must strip themselves of the old man with his vices and his lusts, and put on the new, created by God in justice and in the holiness of truth. No, there is no Christianity without humility, nor true devotion to the Heart of Jesus without the spirit of abnegation, of concealment and as it were of self-annihilation, which constitutes its principal character.
But how and in what manner must this annihilation be effected? The answer is not difficult. In fact, there are two parts of which Christianity is composed and which therefore require our assent, namely, dogma and morality. Therefore, there must be two corresponding acts of humility, namely, the act of the intellect and the act of the will. As for the first, it should not present much difficulty, if only we take a look at what we are and what surrounds us. Life and death, love and pain, natural knowledge and knowledge by faith, the intelligible and the superintelligible, everything is wrapped up in obscurity and darkness; mystery is the center of everything, of every existence, of every evidence. When Jesus, wisdom of the Father, said that without him we can do nothing, sine me nihil potestis facere, he was referring not only to the acts of the will, but also to those of the intellect, and by saying nothing, he wanted to exclude, as St. Augustine observes, the much and the little, the easy and the difficult, the small and the great; absolutely nothing. To understand this well is the science of sciences and at the same time, the surest way to salvation. For, as a profound mind observes, God, having made a mystery the center of the universe and the source of our salvation, has mercifully ordered things in such a way that all of them show us the way to go there, and almost force us to want to save ourselves. Let us bless the Heart of Jesus in this too, and with the submission of the intellect and the docility of the mind, both the flower and fruit of humility, let us keep our faith alive and make our works meritorious.
But humility of the intellect is not enough; we also need humility of the will, because our religion is not only a set of truths to believe, but also of virtues to practice; it has not only dogma, but morality. And certainly this second act of humility presents greater difficulties than the first; we experience it in ourselves every day. How many struggles, how many contradictions between the intellect that imposes its knowledge and the will that rebels against putting it into practice! How much repugnance to doing what we know is right! What an unbridled tendency to what faith and reason unanimously attest to us as forbidden, sinful, and guilty! Do we want to win this war, which costs us so much pain and so much anguish every day? Let us cling to humility, let it preside over the exercise of virtue. And to succeed let us model ourselves on the Heart of Jesus, yes Jesus, who could not consider himself nothing in terms of his divinity, because every good in himself is the source of every good for all others, yet recognized immediately, as soon as he became man, that he owed everything to his Eternal Father; substantia mea tanquam nihilum ante te. And he recognized it not only in the abstract, but in practice, making his life an uninterrupted chain of acts of humility, and humility inviting, or rather commanding, to learn from him to achieve that peace of the children of God, which St. Thomas beautifully defined as tranquility in order. Humility was in the hands of God, the instrument of the supernatural work of creation and redemption. Through humility, Mary was divine forgiveness; through humility, all other creatures acquire the divine in themselves, but humility of intellect and will, of mind and heart. No, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is not an abstraction and even less a sentimentalism; it implies knowledge of Jesus, God and Man, knowledge of love and love imitation. And as among all the virtues, humility is the one that, together with meekness, particularly favors the Heart of Jesus, we will be His true devotees if we strive to make it the constant rule of our thoughts as well as of our actions.
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