THE Great Book tells us that "He, who humbles himself shall be exalted and he who exalts himself shall be humbled." This quote bears two faces of the terms humble.
First, the term humble is being viewed as humility while "humbled" refers to humiliation.
The terms exalted is also ambiguously used -- the first exaltation refers to being praised or raised while the second term refers to pride.
In this beautiful saying one could see the ambiguity of terms.
"Humility, humility and humility," have been repeated by many holy men and women of the Catholic Church. We have heard these words from St. Augustine, St. Monica, Pope St. John Paul II, St. Teresa of Calcutta, St. Therese, and many more saints that might fill up this whole article. They all reminded us to be humble.
Humility is a virtue of accepting the realities of one's existence. Humility is the acknowledgment of who and what we are. Humility is boasting silently of our qualities and virtues. Humility is practicing the values innate in our personhood.
The value of humility has been wrongly interpreted most often.
Some think that denial of honor is humility. Some think that dressing up simply is humility already. Others would even choose lesser expensive goods, just to look humble. Worst, others deny themselves of material goods and honor, to put a show of humility.
These situations are, as some spiritual writers would describe, as "false humility". One even wrote that this is dangerous and sinful.
Humility, once again is the acceptance of who and what we are.
It is never the denial of who and what we are. Acceptance of the realities of life in ourselves is humility.
Giving justice and due to who and what we are is humility but denial of it could mean humiliation. Acceptance of humiliation is only for cowards.
Humiliation is a different form of persecution that made the martyrs and the saints. Their persecutions are the backdraft of their time.
Today, humiliation denies us of making ourselves developed. Humiliating another is not a good act but it will always boomerang to the one who humiliates another.
Pride and humiliation are companions. Take the case of bullying, which is a product of these two.
It is pride that commands the bully to do the act and this is manifested in humiliating another. Bullying is a tool used by pride to manifest itself.
Many bullies proudly boast themselves of having humiliated another. This is a cover-up of one's incapacities and incapabilities.
In short, when one maintains pride by humiliating others, he then becomes a coward and a stupid person.
On the other hand, talking of humility, when one possesses this, there is no need for them to get recognition or titles.
A humble person accepts himself and thinks of other things as mere accidents and is temporary in one's existence.
People and organizations are fond of categorizing or titling people to destroy the value of humility and to exalt pride and humiliation. In this contemporary world, one lives in the useless laurels and forgets the real essence of existence.
In a literature I had read in the past (pardon me I forgot the title of the book), it spoke of the humility of Christ by making himself man and suffered under the hands of man and it also spoke of the pride of man to accept that God has manifested himself as man, thus he was humiliated by the very creature he has created.
So, when humility is within us, we need to stand up for who we are and not as what others tell us of who we are.
As St. Augustine wrote, "it is pride that changed angels into devils and it is humility that makes men as angels."
St. Simon and St. Jude Thaddeus, pray for us.