I’ve recently, within the last month or so, decided to scale a mountain. A very high mountain… for me. And 
note I said scale, which means not just climb to the top but actually go over it.
Here’s the tough part, the counterintuitive part.
I climb the mountain… by going low. Really low. Seriously low. And I don’t do low well. Really. I don’t. I suck at going low.
The mountain is pride. A mountain that’s done me in mucho times in the past, at work, at home, with family, with friends. A mountain that I think has been an obstacle to lots of things for me personally, the biggest likely being my walking in the will of God.
I’m not scaling the mountain alone. In fact, through trial and error, I’ve come to know that attempting to scale the mountain alone is an absolute sign that you’ve already failed the attempt.
As I’ve mentioned, I started this trek a few weeks ago.
I started by regularly praying the following prayer, one called the Litany of Humility:
O Jesus! meek and humble of heart, Hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed,
Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being loved…
From the desire of being extolled …
From the desire of being honored …
From the desire of being praised …
From the desire of being preferred to others…
From the desire of being consulted …
From the desire of being approved …
From the fear of being humiliated …
From the fear of being despised…
From the fear of suffering rebukes …
From the fear of being calumniated …
From the fear of being forgotten …
From the fear of being ridiculed …
From the fear of being wronged …
From the fear of being suspected …
That others may be loved more than I,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be esteemed more than I …
That, in the opinion of the world,
others may increase and I may decrease …
That others may be chosen and I set aside …
That others may be praised and I unnoticed …
That others may be preferred to me in everything…
That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should…
Amen.
That’s a tough prayer. Extremely tough. Made tough by the very mountain I’m trying to scale. Read again the list of desires, the list of fears, I’m asking to be delivered from. It’s huge stuff. Very large, wide, big, huge stuff.
The first time I came across the prayer, I blanched big time, that dreaded mountain looming so large in front of me it completely obscured the deep truths found within the prayer.
Yesterday morning, I came across this from Msgr. Charles Pope. A piece partnering nicely with the prayer, a piece helping to better define what humility is… and what it isn’t:
It [humility] is not to be reduced to mere human respect or flattery, or rooted in worldly and servile fear. True humility has us abase ourselves before others based on what is of God in them. The humble person does not abase himself before others for what is wicked in them. Indeed, many holy and humble people have had to rebuke the wicked and suffer because of it.
Consider our Lord, who found it necessary to rebuke the leaders of His day. Consider John the Baptist, who rebuked Herod; or the Apostles, who refused the command to speak Jesus’ name no longer. These were humble men, but they also knew that the first humility belongs to God, and that no humility toward human beings can ever eclipse or overrule the humility due to God.
Therefore the modern notion of “Who am I to judge?” is not proper humility. Rather, it is rooted more in a kind of sloth (cloaked in the self-congratulatory language of tolerance) that avoids humbly seeking truth and being conformed to it. The truly humble person is open to correcting others and to being corrected, because humility always regards the truth.
…
And that lead us finally to a kind of focal statement about humility: “Humility is reverence for the truth about ourselves.” Indeed, the focus of humility is always the truth.
And what is the truth? You are gifted, but incomplete.
Humility doesn’t say, “Aw shucks, I’m nothing.” That is not true. You are God’s creation and are imbued with gifts. But note this: they are gifts. You did not acquire them on your own. God gave them to you. And most often, He gave them to you through others who raised you, taught you, and helped you to attain the skills and discover the gifts that were within you. So you do have gifts. But they are gifts. Scripture says, What have you that you have not received? And if you have received, why do you glory as though you had not received? (1 Cor 4:7)
But though you are gifted, you do not have all the gifts. And this is the other truth of humility: that God and others must augment your many deficiencies. For whatever your gifts, and however numerous they are, you do not have all the gifts or even most of them. That is only possible in relationship with God and His people.
One thing I’m convinced as I earnestly strive toward the goal of scaling this mountain is that I’m not going to do so quickly, that I’ll have setbacks, that the mountain will at times beat me… but only temporarily.
When the setbacks come, I’ll camp out wherever it is on the mountain I’ll be at the time and pray that litany, seeking the help of He who overcame this very mountain for all of us by going as low as one can go, to the very depths.
For you. For me.
Deliver me Lord.
Crossposted at Brutally Honest.
