Today we're continuing our reflections on Franciscan spirituality, and one of the principal means that we use to draw closer to God.
The means is humility.
And we look back on our exemplar, St. Francis, for insights into this precious virtue.
In heaven, a refulgent throne of glory awaited St. Francis, as was revealed to him by one of his friars.
And this friar, dazed by the splendor of the vision, asked Francis, while he was walking with him along the street, what opinion Francis had of himself.
What do you think of yourself?
I believe that I'm the greatest sinner, responded the humble servant of God.
His companion, the friar, objected that Francis couldn't think or affirm that with certainty.
Francis added, if Christ had shown such great mercy to a man as wicked as you want, I truly believe that he would have been much more grateful to God than I have been.
So Francis fought always to humble himself, and God fought always to raise him up.
St. Francis taught Friar Leo one day during Matins to respond by recalling to Francis his sins and to affirm that he was unworthy of God's mercy.
Friar Leo, however, with the simplicity of a dove, wanted to obey, but he just couldn't do it.
God placed on his lips words which promised blessings and graces to Francis with a crescendo of intensity that was in proportion to Francis' progressive humbling of himself.
St. Francis, who, with sorrowful protests to Friar Leo, confessed his unworthiness and his sins.
When he began to understand that no man in the world can love God and live in virtue unless he first died to himself, St. Francis was consumed by an insatiable desire to make himself small before God and others, and he punished himself severely every time an interior movement in his heart seemed to come from pride.
Bernard, his first companion, knew well when he had the saint's orders to place his foot on Francis' neck and the other over his mouth, as St. Francis ordered him to do, calling him shameful and vile.
St. Francis said, do this to me, because the saint wanted his way to punish the presumption and the impudence of his heart, as his biographies say, which was disturbed when Bernard didn't respond to him because Bernard himself was absorbed in prayer.
So, St. Francis calls out to Bernard, Bernard doesn't respond because he's absorbed in prayer.
Francis gets a little agitated and upset because of that, and after that, because he sees in himself that agitation, he has Bernard punish him.
Francis had discovered what a disciple of his, Blessed Giles of Assisi, would express with lively sentiments that, quote, it would be good if we could find some great and heavy weight that we kept continually tied around our necks so that it would always pull us down, meaning always make us humble, unquote, said Blessed Giles.
This was a joyful discovery for St. Francis, as it taught him the way which is accessible to everyone, to arrive at God, a way in which all the glory and honor goes to God, a way which permitted him to disappear, as it were, in order to make room for his beloved, who is the only one who's worthy of love and honor.
As St. John the Baptist says, he, meaning Jesus, must increase, I must decrease, John 3:30.
As an expert strategist in the daily battle of the spirit, St. Francis taught his followers to walk in the way of humility for a number of reasons.
One, in order to combat evil at its root, since humility is, according to Blessed Giles, the lightning bolt of thunder that hits, dispels, burns, and consumes every evil, every vice, every sin, he said.
Two, Francis wanted us to embrace humility in order to arrive at having the most intimate and luminous knowledge of God possible, since no one can arrive at a true notion of God except by means of humility.
Three, humility is necessary in order to receive an abundance of grace from the Heavenly Father, the giver of every good, since, according to the gospel, the one who humbles himself will be exalted, Jesus says in Matthew 23:12.
And the portion of our interior progress is well expressed by another saying of Blessed Giles who said, the straight way of going up is to go down, meaning if you want to get to heaven, learn to humble yourself on earth.
Fourth, the humility is essential for a practical and fruitful apostolate in which the seraphic soul must know how to put themselves on an inferior level in respect to those who suffer under the weight of humanity and who go back and forth between the darkness of error and vice and the light of truth and virtue.
The Franciscan must, with serenity and sweetness, feel themselves as a minore, as a little brother, servant of everyone.
God and others look with sympathy on humble gestures and also on humble souls, and that's a good thing.
Humility is a means for conformity to Christ who, as St. Paul says, was in the form of God and emptied himself, accordingly taking the form of a servant, says the Apostle Philippians 2, verses 6 and 7.
God made himself poor, small, an object of disdain, a target for hatred and humiliations.
Therefore to his followers, Francis recommended, quote, to follow in humility and poverty the Lord Jesus Christ and to be happy when they find themselves among the unimportant people and those held in no account, among the poor and the weak, the sick, the lepers, the beggars along the way.
And they shouldn't be ashamed, said Francis, but rather they should remember that our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living and omnipotent God, set his face like flint on the way of the cross and wasn't ashamed, says the Holy Father.
In other words, the Lord was not ashamed or afraid to embrace humility.
Humility above all is an indispensable means for incorporation into Christ and is useful for our fruitfulness as living members united to him.
An absolute submission to Jesus is necessary, an absolute confidence in him, and a complete diffidence in ourselves.
We should glory, but we should only glory in Jesus Christ, and of ourselves we should learn to glory in what St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2, verses 29 and 31, where he says he glories in what?
In his infirmities and in his struggles.
Because then the power of God shines forth through him.
The seraphic soul knows through experience that pride is mediocrity and that humility is true greatness.
So let's ask our lady then for the grace to grow in this essential virtue of littleness, this virtue known as humility.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.