Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [76]
Humility joyfully assents to creatureliness
Furthermore, humility also implies blissful assent to this our creatureliness and non-being. What it demands is not a reluctant or resigned admission of our nothingness: it is, primarily, a joyous response to the infinite glory of God, similar to what is meant by the words of St. Catherine of Siena: Che tu sia ed io non sia (That Thou shalt be, and that I shall not be). The humble man does not want to be anything by his own resources; he is free from all ambition to be something by his own power and to have to recognize no master over himself. He wills to receive everything from God alone. The glory of God makes him happy; he is thus so centered in his love of adoration for God that the idea of being something by his own force—aside from its unreality—would not tempt him at all; nor does the concern about keeping his sovereignty intact carry the slightest meaning to him. Such an attitude, however, is only possible in reference to a personal God; moreover, as Pascal says, “not to the God of the philosophers, but to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”; above all, to the living God who approaches and addresses us in the Person of Jesus Christ, His only-begotten Son.
Humility delights in the existence and glory of God
In true humility, then, we may discern three elements. First, awareness of, and responsiveness to, the glory of God. God in His infinite holiness having revealed Himself to our minds, it is for us to respond with holy joy and loving adoration. Prior to everything else, we must be filled with the blissful consciousness that the infinitely perfect Person—God who is omnipotent, omniscient, and all good—is the Prime Cause of all being. We must give, in reference to God, the pure response to value, our joy being elicited by His glory alone—that is, we must say with the holy Church: “We thank Thee for Thy great glory.” Touched by the ray of God’s supernatural holiness that transcends all our concepts, we must exclaim with the Psalmist: “For better is one day in Thy courts above thousands.”
Even in perceiving a human value we may evince this wholly disinterested, pure joy, which refers to the existence of value as such. We rejoice in considering that truth exists; that a certain good and noble person dwells on earth; that there are such beautiful things as the starred sky or a great work of art.
But what we have now in mind is our joy related to the fact that the absolute Being is infinitely perfect and that this infinitely glorious Being is a Person. What an immense augmentation of the reality of good is implied in this—that the summum bonum (“the highest good”) should not be a mute impersonal something, an idea or a principle, but a Person speaking to us: Ego sum qui sum (“I am who am”); the absolute Person in whom all values converge at their highest, who has created us and keeps us in being, who embraces us and owns us as only a person can.
Humility calls upon us to allow our hearts to be wounded by the glory of God, to fall on our knees in loving adoration, and to deliver ourselves over to God entirely. We must display that pure response in which our center of gravity is thus transferred from ourselves to God, that His glory taken in itself, without any reference to His benevolence towards us, becomes for us a source of precious joy: Dews meus et omnia (“My God and my all”), said St. Francis of Assisi.
Humility acknowledges our debt to God
Yet, no less essential to true humility is