Words of Wisdom
Posted by Alexei on September 25th, 2008
I hope this post to be one of many containing bits of wisdom gathered from books new and old. I wish to share what I have learned in the past year.
Francis De Sales writes:
Honors, dignities, and rank are like saffron, which thrives best and grows most plentifully when trodden under foot. It is no honor to be handsome if a man prizes himself for it; if beauty is to have good grace, it should be unstudied. Learning dishonors us when it inflates our minds and degenerates into mere pedantry. If we are demanding about rank, place, and title, then we not only expose our qualities to examination, judgment, and condemnation but make all of them base and contemptible. Just as honor is an excellent thing, when given to us freely, so also it becomes base when demanded, sought after, and asked for. A peacock spreads his tail in self-admiration and by the very act of raising up his beautiful feathers he ruffles all the others and displays his own ugliness.
What a statement! True honor is not earned by touting your deeds loudest in the crowd. It is not earned by demands that others acknowledge your work. True honor does not boast, it is simply evident from the humble thoughts and deeds of those who possess it.
“What makes humility so desirable is the marvelous thing it does to us; it creates in us a capacity for the closest possible intimacy with God.” – Monica Baldwin
The above quotation seems to dovetail with St. Francis de Sales’ quite nicely. For not only does humility keep us more noble and virtuous in character, it also makes us more reverent towards God, as we won’t set ourselves in His place. This doesn’t mean that we should self-flagellate to an extreme – for God doesn’t want us to loathe ourselves – but in keeping our egos in check, we make it possible for God’s grace to touch us, and we then in turn are more inclined to honor Him.
Humbly submitted,
Your fiancee