Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [89]
Thus does Christ call on us to step down from the natural position in which God has installed us. Humility certainly means the habit of living in the truth; beyond that, however, it means an active gesture of quitting the status that is our natural due, a step towards reducing ourselves to naught. It constitutes a specific element in the imitation of Christ.
Here the deep connection between humility and charity manifests itself. In its deepest roots, humility is a fruit of charity; it is our love of Christ that makes us will to “die” so that He may live in us and again inspires our readiness to serve all men, because He has said: “What you do to the least of my brethren, you have done it to me.”
Such alone as have absorbed the spirit of these words of the Lord: “Even as the Son of man is not come to be ministered unto, but to minister” (Matt. 20:28)—such hearts alone as have been wounded to the core by this descent of love “unto the end,” may acquire the humility that has filled the saints; the humility that made every insult, every injustice, every humiliation taste sweet to them; that caused them permanently to undergo the process of self-surrender and self-humiliation, and stirred up in their souls the fire of an unlimited readiness to serve. Christian humility proper encloses the mystery of an inward descent down to the abyss of nothingness, so that God may be “all in all” within us.
Humility confers beauty on the souls of the humble
He who lives in humility deliberately assigns to himself a place even beneath the one which he can naturally claim. He is like the guest to whom the Lord has said, “Friend, rise higher.” Humility, therefore, is not only a presupposition for the genuineness and truth of all our virtues, but is the central condition of our transformation and regeneration in Christ. Moreover, it embodies a high value in itself, conferring on man a unique kind of beauty.
Humility bursts the bonds of all narrowness; through it, even a personality insignificant by nature will acquire width and greatness. For it is only the humble soul, the soul that has emptied itself, which can be fully penetrated by the divine Life it has received in holy Baptism; and it is upon such a soul that there falls a reflection of the greatness and infinitude of God. Here is a great mystery, paradoxical yet true: precisely he who speaks the word of total assent to his finiteness and limitation will thereby illuminate his nature with an aura which in some way images the unlimited breadth of God. In him alone who dies inwardly, descending almost beneath the natural level of being that has been his due in the order of creation, who wills no longer to occupy any space at all, may the wealth of supernatural life blossom out, according to St. Paul’s words: “I live, yet it is not I who live but Christ who lives in me.”
Qui se exaltat—humiliabitur; qui se humiliat—exaltabitur. The exaltation of the humble is by no means merely a reward which God grants to them in life eternal; it is also an intrinsic effect of humility, accomplished even on earth. For indeed, the humble walk as if clad in the attire of a unique nobility, before which all splendor of purely natural talents and gifts wanes into insignificance. By his descent beneath his natural rank, the humble man in a mystical sense prostrates himself, at the feet of the Lord, as did St. Mary Magdalene. He is lifted up by Jesus and thus enters the celestial realm.
All height, width, and depth, all greatness and beauty of humility, with its irresistible victorious