Thank You, Lord, That I'm Better Than Him
A quick lesson in humility
Today, I went to Confession, the first time this year. My last confession was two or three weeks ago, and there were no huge items on my sin list, so I figured I was doing sort of okay.
As I was standing in line, I noticed a young police officer in full gear a few people ahead of me, and the thought crossed my mind that if he were in line behind me, I’d let him go first because “he probably needs it more than me.”
As I thought this, I felt very holy and charitable.
Jesus responded instantly, and the sharpness of His tone in my mind cut me like a knife.
“HOW DARE YOU!” he said. “How dare you think that his sins are greater than yours.”
I burst into tears. He was right. I assumed that because he was a police officer, he must have committed graver sins than I. It was just another version of the Pharisee praying, “Oh Lord, thank you that I’m not like that sinner over there.”
And it goes to show how much we have to guard ourselves against falling into that kind of hubristic thinking.
St. Francis of Assisi used to proclaim that he was the greatest sinner in the world.
One of his Franciscan brothers protested, asking how that could be if St. Francis worked so many miracles; surely he was aware how holy and blessed by God he was.
Whereupon St. Francis replied, “If the worst criminal in prison had been given the graces I had been given, I must think he would have made more out of them, or wasted less than I, and be more righteous than I.”
St. Augustine said, “Humility must accompany all our actions, must be with us everywhere; for as soon as we glory in our good works, they are of no further value to our advancement in virtue.”
Here’s a quote from St. Margaret Mary Alacoque: “Be humble towards God and gentle with your neighbor. Judge and accuse no one but yourself, and ever excuse others. Speak of God always to praise and glorify Him, speak of your neighbor only with respect—do not speak of yourself at all, either well or ill.”
And one last one from St. Faustina:
The soul’s true greatness is in loving God and in humbling oneself in His presence, completely forgetting oneself and believing oneself to be nothing; because the Lord is great, but He is well-pleased only with the humble; He always opposes the proud.
God bless you!
WoW that spoke to me big time!
Thank you my dear.
PS Where is that Beautiful Church?
This is a good post, which I am meditating on (i.e. discursively), so now I will ramble:
> and the thought crossed my mind that if he were in line behind me, I’d let him go first because “he probably needs it more than me.”
It is interesting how thoughts cross one's mind. Some of them come from the thought factory (there is a building near my old college campus that had a sort of smokestack that clouds came out of (water vapor, I guess), and I thought of it as "the cloud factory", I forget whether anyone else called it that, and when I think of thoughts being generated from our own faculties I usually think of "the cloud factory" but for thoughts), which might technically be called the imagination or something. Some of them are worms on a hook dangled into one's head from the outside. Some of them are a little beam of light (like a little sunbeam through a window). The thought factory thinks of some normal things (e.g. I could eat that candy bar) and some sinful things (e.g. I could eat that candy bar (same thought but on a fast day)) and some plain stupid things (e.g. I could eat that bar of soap), and then we decide whether to really do that (maybe; no; no). There are some things that are just so dumb but come up so often (e.g. I could throw my rosary into that storm sewer grate (as I am walking outside praying the rosary... there is a decent chance that this impulse will show up at some point)) even though I immediately reject them and I don't know whether it is in the "I could eat that bar of soap" category (dumb but natural thought) or the worm on a hook category. Similarly I don't know whether either "I'll let him go first" or "he needs it more than me" or both belong to one source or another, and to some extent it does not matter (*knowing* with certainty that *not all of "my" thoughts are "mine"* is enough to cause a change in behavior overall, because then one does not *automatically* trust all of the thoughts that show up looking like "mine" and that pass a "not obviously silly" test, like not eating soap. It is like *knowing* (experientally) that sometimes a mouse gets into my house and therefore I cannot leave food just anywhere. The one time that I recognized a thought as really clearly "not mine" for the first time was like seeing a mouse on the kitchen countertop for the first time. Quite upsetting and I was angry and determined to take action.)
> As I thought this, I felt very holy and charitable.
With a thought that is a worm on a hook, there has to be something that is appealing (the worm), because people only do things that they perceive to be good. Letting someone go ahead in line is appealing because we are giving up something to benefit someone else (and sometimes waiting in line we just naturally have thoughts about "who would I let go ahead of me"). But there is something attached to it that is not good. In this case there are two things attached to it! One is that I am presented with the thought that someone needs *confession* more than me (so, if I entertain this thought rather than rejecting it, I am judging him and myself, weighing us on a balance and deciding that I have fewer or less-serious sins. It would have been fine to look at a mother with a fussy baby ahead of me and think "waiting in line is harder for some people than others and I would let babies go ahead of me.") The other is the temptation to pat myself on the back (in this case, for not even doing something externally, but for only imagining that *if* something had happened differently, *then* I would do something good, because that's just the kind of person that I am! Holy and charitable! This temptation could still be deployed even in the case of letting babies go ahead of me, or even in the case that I reject the first temptation to weigh people's sins in a balance: how holy I am, and how humble and obedient, to have rejected it.) Maybe there are thoughts like this raining down on us all the time like meteors that mostly burn up in the Earth's outer atmosphere and never hit anything (like the dozen times that I have had the thought "I could drop this rosary into the storm sewer" which is a dumb thought and I am tired of it), but once in a while one of them gets through. As you say, we have to be on guard.
Judging by the writings of saints, after a while a person gets to the point that they have experiential knowledge (the same kind of impact as "I saw a mouse on my counter": probably just a fleeting glimpse but that is enough to radically alter one's idea of one's kitchen) of what a creature is compared to what God is. At this point St. Francis recognizes he is the greatest sinner in the world (ONLY GOD is good, as Jesus says (fishing for "would you like to recognize me as divine?" but the rich young man who had called him "good" does not follow this line of reasoning in the way that commentators did later, having something else on his mind that he wants to ask), which would be a bit of a shock to get a glimpse of) and also that he is still loved absolutely and unconditionally by God (despite feeling like he has never done anything good.) Saints think that they are great sinners (it is not some kind of false modesty; they really think it, which is surprising to us because we see their works which demonstrate their love; but, also, they are fairly calm about it! and I don't think we properly recognize that this too is surprising, because we have not thought about what it would be like to really think it), because they have seen something that we have not seen. I *guess* the reason they have seen it is because they want to and are willing to.