Humility: The Powerful Over the Pitiful
And no this blog post is not about a baking competition.
Competition, however, breeds notions of conquest: glory for the winner and humiliation for the loser. Reinforced is the idea that one party is trodden down in order for another to rise up. Humanities evolutionary funnel – the law of the jungle – assures the survival of the species by squeezing out only the fittest. The one with the biggest gun gets the loudest bang – the powerful reign over the pitiful.
Yet, look at Mother Teresa – a tiny bent-over nun who for decades carried the dying poor from the streets of Calcutta, India to nurse them in their end hours. Peeling off sidewalks those who didn’t make it through the funnel she gave final dignity to lives crushed by circumstance and society.
Posthumously canonized for her work by the Catholic Church and no longer called Mother Teresa but Saint Teresa, the diminutive nun would not have recognized her elevated title. Her ministry was not rooted in ascendance but in humble action. Often the work was dirty, distasteful and menial yet how is leaving behind an indomitable legacy with worldwide reach pitiful?
Darkness Drives Humility
After Mother Teresa’s death in 1997 it was several years before correspondence about her spiritual life is shared with the public. What comes out is startling; even heartbreaking. A soul dedicated to love had spent fifty years, almost her whole adult life, feeling unloved. How can that be?
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Mathew 4:26 (NIV)
This sense of separation from God…it brings me to my knees and breaks my heart; a self-less soul so abjectly alone and forgotten. I could never find the courage to endure the spiritual pain Saint Teresa carried for decades. Only her bishop and spiritual directors knew of her intense conflict of soul. She carried an insistent longing for God, a deep and painful yearning for a sense of his love and presence, yet all she ever felt was desperately alone, abandoned and rejected.
Yet, it was her desperation that drove her to the streets. The humble state of her soul was the wellspring of love. She understood the despair and longing of those she cradled in her arms.
And it was in embracing her own pain that Saint Teresa became empowered and made void the law of the jungle.
To be continued (refer next post).
What does humility mean to you?
Note to Readers:
Dear Readers,
During Lent (the period leading up to Good Friday and Easter Sunday) blog posts will appear once per week on Sundays. This is for two related reasons – Lent is typically a time for spiritual discipline and I wish to take it as an opportunity to slow down for reflection and to write. The idea is to allow more space to build quality content over volume of content.
I invite you also to use this time of respite to consider more carefully what God might be saying to you.
Reflectively yours,
Carolin M. Paradis – An Everyday Storyteller