“Learn to be humble by doing all the humble work and doing it for Jesus. You cannot learn humility from books; you learn it by accepting humiliations. Humiliations are not meant to torture us; they are gifts from God. These little humiliations—if we accept them with joy—will help us to be holy, to have a meek and humble heart like Jesus.”

— Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, “Thirsting for God” p.43

What is humility? The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines as:

the quality or state of not thinking you are better than other people: the quality or state of being humble

In James 4:10 we see the following verse:

“Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you”

God asks us to put others first. By putting others first we are doing God’s work. St. Augustine of Hippo wrote: “Pride is the commencement of all sin.” Pride becomes a preoccupation with oneself and is the opposite of putting others first. St. Teresa is saying that by doing “humble” work you are doing work for others and as we do so this makes us more like Jesus with a meek and humble heart. Another scripture verse that comes to mind is “the last will be first, and the first will be last”. Sometimes it is hard to step aside and put others first especially if our ego gets in the way. When this happens, please think about our Lord and what He went through on our behalf. He was beaten, tortured, humiliated, and eventually crucified, yet on the cross He was asking for forgiveness for those that were responsible. That’s a pretty good example for all of us to think about.

God Bless