The practice of Humility - 57

Have recourse to those saints eminent in humility:

            - to St Michael the Archangel, the first of the humble, as Lucifer was the first of the proud;

            - to St John the Baptist, who although he had reached such heights of sanctity as to be taken for the Messiah, felt so lowly as to deem himself unworthy to loosen Jesus’ sandal strap;

            - to St Paul, that privileged apostle, taken up to the third heaven.  Having heard the mysteries of the divinity, deemed himself the least of the apostles, not even worthy of the name (cf. 2 Cor 12:11);

            - to Pope St Gregory, who busied himself more to escape the supreme pontificate of the Church than the ambitious do to achieve honors;

            - to St Augustine, who at the zenith of glory, both, as holy bishop, and most profound doctor of the Catholic Church, left an immortal monument of his humility in his admirable books The Confessions and Retractions;

            - to St Alexius, who disguised as a beggar within the walls of his paternal home, preferred the insults and outrages of his own servants to all the honors and dignities which he could very easily have obtained;

            - to St Aloysius Gonzaga, a nobleman who gave up his title happily and chose a humble and austere life rather than the greatness of the world.

            Turn to so many other saints, who shine with the brightest light in the splendor of the Church because of their humility. Be convinced that these humble servants of God will intercede before him in heaven so that you may be among the imitators of their virtues.

J. Pecci (later Pope Leo XIII)