We all want to have a closer relationship with God.
We all want to grow in courage.
We all want to experience interior peace in the midst of our stress-filled society.
All of that can happen, if we take off the sandals of our natural self-sufficiency and learn to depend more and more on God and his grace.
That's easy to say, but it's not always easy to do.
Two things can help us especially, in a very practical way.
First, we can cultivate the virtue of humility simply by spending time every day in heartfelt prayer, even if it's only a few minutes a day, even if it’s only using the simple prayers we can find in any Catholic prayer book.
- Every time we pray, we exercise humility, because we acknowledge that God is God, and we are not.
- And when we exercise humility, it grows, like a muscle.
- This is why the devil is always trying to keep us from praying.
Second, we can talk less about ourselves.
- Because of our fallen human nature, we all tend to see the world through self-centered lenses.
- This comes across in our conversation.
- We tend to focus more on our own ideas, feelings, and opinions than on others’.
- By making a point of understanding other people, listening to them attentively, and using conversations to encourage others and build others up, we can gradually purify our self-centered, arrogant tendencies, and build up this crucial virtue of humility.
As we continue with this Mass, let's ask our Lord to pour his grace into our hearts, so that they become more like his.
St Faustina Kowalska once wrote, "Now I understand why there are so few saints; it is because so few souls are deeply humble."
Today, let's decide to prove her wrong.