The Humble Person is Conscious of Dependence on God

At our meeting on Sat, Matt offered an interesting way of thinking of humility: "Not so much to think less of oneself, but to think of oneself less."

I offer as a reflection on this the following from Luigi Giussani (from his book Morality:Memory and Desire at p. 30): "Human beings are distinguished from other living creatures because they are conscious of how they live." In other words, being conscious of oneself is at the core of being human.

Does that mean that we ought to think of ourselves "more"? Giussani goes on: "But this consciousness is not complete if it does not reach down into the very foundation from which life emerges. The arc of fruitful reflection does not achieve its proper dimension if it does not arrive back at that Point from which the 'I' that does the reflecting ultimately derives its being. The ideal man, the man who would achieve complete self-realization, must continually possess this consciousness of his own dependence."

Our thinking of ourselves -- placing ourselves in the equation, which we do as human beings --properly includes thinking of ourselves always in the context of our dependence on God. In fact, this is part of the definition of prayer. For Augustine prayer is to raise our minds to God, to become conscious of God. As Giussani says (at p.29), "What does it mean to become consicous of God? Fundamentally, it means to recognize our own original and absolute dependence on him."

So humility is not so much thinking less of oneself or thinking of oneself less, but thinking of God more, and of oneself as one truly is: totally dependent on God. The more we think about this the better, for that is entering into prayer. For the high and mighty that will, in fact, require thinking "less" of oneself, and for the selfish, thinking of oneself less. For all of us, to enter into prayer, to be conscious of how we live in truth, will be to recognize our dependance on God.

Practically speaking, how is this done? One way, I think, is in our daily act of contrition. It's purpose is to bring to consciousness those times of the day when we act as though God does not exist, when we think and act as though we are independent of God. This forgetting of God is pride and sin, and what prayer and humility corrects.