Humility Has a Sister
22nd Sunday of the Year
I am an only child. But I am friends with enough families to know that siblings often differ greatly from each other in interests, temperament, and personality. The family of the virtues is no exception. In the First Reading and the Gospel today, we are introduced to the virtue of humility. We have met her before. We are all aware humility is a virtue that we as Christians should make our own.
While we pursue humility, which is an attractive virtue in itself, what might pass by our attention is that humility has a sister; and for however much humility is quiet and reserved, her sister is wild and audacious. This sister’s name is magnanimity; and her name means great spiritedness. Humilitas, in Latin, is related to humus meaning soil or earth. Humility keeps us grounded, as we heard that we should seek not what is too sublime for us. Humility keeps us bent toward the ground.1 Magnanimity, on the other hand, stares wide-eyed to the sky; and she takes any opportunity to leave the ground and fly.
These two sisters are as different as they come, but they are still part of the same family. And as sisters, they complement each other: filling out and keeping the other in check. To be virtuous is to have all the virtues, not just some of them; and so, we need can’t play favorites with humility and magnanimity. And, in reality, one can’t really exist without the other.
Part of the problem with the Church today is that (ironically) people have taken readings like today’s a little too seriously. We hear conduct your affairs with humility and take the lowest place as commands to clam up and quench any fire in us that desires what is great. The overly humble person thinks they are too small and value too little. They matter as much as the soil at which they stare. That kind of humility doesn’t attract anyone to the Christian life. Pope Francis knows it, too. In his first major letter The Joy of the Gospel, he called out those charged with preaching the Gospel who look like someone who has just come back from a funeral.2
What we’re missing in our pursuit of humility is the equal pursuit of magnanimity. Thomas Aquinas thought so, as well. Whenever there is a difficult good that we are called to pursue, he says a twofold virtue is necessary.3 On the one hand, we need humility to moderate and restrain us from going after that difficult good in a way that will guarantee us to fail; but on the other hand, we need magnanimity to strengthen us against despairing that the difficult good is too difficult for us to obtain. To put it another way, if we only had humility, we wouldn’t go after anything hard or challenging; we wouldn’t even get out of bed in the morning.
And if we choose to live that way, we are choosing not to live the Christian life. For every Christian is called to a life of holiness that reaches its fulfillment in becoming a saint. Listen again to the Letter to the Hebrews: You have not approached that which could be touched… No, you have approached Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem… and God the judge of all. Where the Christian is called is infinitely beyond our reach. And the life of holiness that gets us there is likewise beyond what our nature can do for itself. So, with humility alone, we would despair of our call to holiness in this life and sainthood in the next. And that leaves us seeking simple and fleeting pleasures in whatever superficial goodness this world can offer. That is not how Christians are called to live.
Now, we still need humility. She has an important job to do. She keeps us in check. Humility reminds us of our limits as creatures before our Creator. She stops us from thinking that we have earned or deserve what God freely gives us. When people praise us for the good we’ve done, humility whispers in our ear: They’re not clapping for you. And all of that is good and necessary for the Christian life.
But humility needs her sister; and true humility is eager to introduce us to her. When we are humble, we are able to hear God call us; and God always calls us higher. The humble person receives God’s invitation and magnanimity enables the humble person to respond with generosity to God’s call upward. With both sisters, we are able to know that all we are and have are gifts from God; and, as a gift, we must return ourselves to God by pursuing whatever he calls upon us to pursue, no matter how far beyond us it may be. And that is the life of a saint: one who possess an honest awareness of who they are with a ready generosity to respond to what God inspires them to do.
We see both sisters present in the Gospel. In the parable, Jesus exhorts us to take the lowest place so that the host can come and say, My friend, move up to a higher position. Both moves – both sisters – are important. Without humility, we would presume the higher place and be embarrassed when we are sent back down. And without magnanimity, we would refuse the gift of being called to the higher life that Jesus desires for us. He speaks of both sisters when he says the one who humbles himself will be exalted. The one who truly knows humility will also meet magnanimity.
The Church needs people who take that call seriously and embrace both virtues! In every state of life and vocation, the mission of the Church depends on humble people who answer the call to be higher. People with great ambition but without humility do great damage to the Church. I don’t need to cite any examples there. But people who ignore the call to go higher do the same. Think of the great saints and what the Church and the world would be if they declined the Lord’s invitation. Francis, rebuild my Church… Nah, I’m all set.
All of us can be tempted to hide behind the veil of humility and skirt around God’s will under the guise of being humble. But that is not humility at all. In fact, that is the grossest pride. For pride is nothing other than the preference of my will over God’s. We all need to ask how we are being called. What gifts has God given me that he’s inviting me to put at the service of his Church? Can I help another see what gifts God has given them that perhaps they don’t see for themselves? Am I resisting the call higher because of a good and legitimate reason? Or is my pride causing me to hide?
The Christian life is about having both virtues in equal measure: humility and magnanimity. We need humility to know the depths of our humanity and magnanimity to heed the call to what is above and beyond it. Humility grounds us in nature; magnanimity disposes us toward grace.
As Christ humbled himself to become one of us, he invites us higher: to become one with him, to share in his divinity. Both sister-virtues are found perfectly in Christ; and Christ introduces and shares them with us, above all in the sacraments. For the one who humbles himself for us is the one who exalts us with himself. He comes to us in our humble position and says: My friend, move up. And in that call, we are lifted up and brought near to touch what by our nature we could not.
In this feast, the eternal wedding feast of the Lamb, Christ humbles himself in the Eucharist to call us higher and feeds us with his grace to pick our heads up, to be great-spirited, and to take our place in his company where he desires us to be.
Preached Saturday, August 27, 2022 at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church, Towson and Sunday, August 28, 2022 at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen.
Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II q. 161, a. 1, ad 1.
Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 10.
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II q. 161, a. 1.
A well written message and a narration which is clear and concise. When I attend mass, the homily is not always on point, with references to a myriad of subjects and time frames of old. I like our priests to talk as if they are personally addressing me. Not for selfishness I ask this, but to help correlate their reason how I can feel stronger in my faith, and how to deal with our current divisive culture. John Gough
Sometimes humility is really laziness to use God's gifts that He gives each of us, like burying the single coin instead of doubling it with our work, or like the 5 virgins who did not have oil for their lamps before the arrival of the bridegroom. At the other extreme one can also get one's head-full of ourselves, pride, and produce something of great material value, but for the purpose of a selfish fortune and for worldly self-centered aggrandizement.
I didn't know about the painting in the Louvre of the 2 sisters. I like the comparison of the 2 sisters, and the needed balance. I learned something.
Dora