You think that you possess humility. Other men accuse themselves; but while you cannot even bear to be accused by others, you reckon yourself humble. If you are humble, by these things try yourself: whether or not you are troubled when you suffer injustice.
Homily 6.
+JMJ+
ReplyDeleteThat question really got me thinking . . . because it perfectly fits something that's going on in my extended family right now. Some people are being treated unjustly, and it's humbling to realise that the best response from them doesn't involve taking action to balance the scales.
This paragraph seems a bit open-ended, though. Did St. Isaac have other questions to help us get a sense of our humility?
He talks about humility a lot, but it's mostly in passing and scattered. His homilies are also structured rather loosely -- he may have often been answering particular questions -- so in Homily Six he doesn't actually say much more than he says here.
ReplyDelete(The paragraph before is about the 'men who accuse themselves' -- i.e., saints who have actively accepted bad reputations or have acted as lunatics to avoid being rewarded for good deeds. The paragraph after, on the other hand, moves on to talk about what Christ meant when he talked about 'many mansions'.)