Part 3, Chapter 6
Once when I was a seminarian (a man studying to be a priest), I was asked to help out with a function. There was much work to be done for this event and there was set up. I was asked to set up the chairs, so I was doing this when, I decided to manhandle a stack of chairs, suddenly it happened, I wasn’t expecting it. Oh it was so, so embarrassing. I thought that I was doing so great and then I split my pants. Lifting chairs and wearing khakis is not a good combination. I couldn’t believe that it happened, I wanted to hide. What made it worse was the fact that I had no other pants with me and that the party involved our Bishop and many of the priests of the Diocese. There was definitely some abjection involved in this. “There is a difference between humility and abjection; for abjection is the poverty, vileness and littleness that exist in us, without our taking heed to them; but humility implies a real knowledge and voluntary recognition of that abjection” (Introduction to the Devout Life, 84). In my little story there was abjection, but not really a sense of humility. If I had offered this suffering to the Lord and said something like, “I deserve to have this happen to me because I am nothing,” than I might have humility. St. Francis De Sales says, “And what I want to teach you is, that we should not merely rejoice in our trouble, which we do by means of patience, but we should also cherish the abjection, which is done by means of humility” (Introduction to the Devout Life, 85). To cherish the abjection and rejoice in the trouble, wow, I know I have a long ways to go. Still, this is what is involved in the devout life.
We shouldn’t look for ways of having humility, they will naturally happen. Life brings plenty of opportunities for us to be humble. Humility will come knocking at our doors. St. Francis De Sales talks about abjection in this context when he says, “Unquestionably, those most helpful to our own souls, and most acceptable to God, are such as come accidentally, or in the natural course of events” (Introduction to the Devout Life, 86). Humility comes and is needed in our lives, we should embrace it when it comes.