This week, we continue our discussion on humility, which we started last week. Let me share an event that happened in the week that convicted me and cast my mind back to the ways of being humble I had written about. 

A multi-millionaire international project I was instrumental in initiating from scratch has been approved, and guess what? The role my friend, his organisation and I played was neither mentioned nor acknowledged; only those who came much later into the project were mentioned at a high-powered meeting where I was present. While excited that it became successful, I was unhappy that my friend and I were never acknowledged.

But quickly, what I had written about humility came to mind, and that portion of the litany of humility, “that others may be praised and I unnoticed”. This experience taught me that practising and attaining humility is not as easy. 

But how do we attain humility? Does humility simply spring up in our hearts? No. Because of Adam's sin, we all have pride deeply rooted in our souls, meaning we can only attain humility through a long and painful process. 

According to Richard Clarke, this process includes acknowledging our sinful ways and being consciously “gentle towards those who provoke us by bearing contradictions with patience, accepting disappointments with patience and rebuffs without complaint. This is a gradual process, and we must not expect proficiency in humility until we have long practised these means to attain it.”

It is also important to pray for humility as the means through which we receive from God is through prayer. Prayer is the recognition of our dependence on God, while humility pertains to our recognition of this dependence on it. Let us pray then for humility.

Apostle Paul said, “For by the grace given to me, I bid everyone among you to not think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith which God has assigned him” (Romans 12:3).

The amazing thing about God’s kingdom is that Jesus can change us with his transforming hands extending to those areas of our lives that are not in sync with his will. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “The baptised person should train herself to live in humility (CCC2540). 

Ponder on this with the help of the Holy Spirit, we can train ourselves to become a humble person. Talking about transformation, it was a lack of humility that transformed Lucifer into Satan. Next week, we shall discuss this in more detail.

Lord, make us humble. Amen