“The greater our sufferings, the more limitless our glory. Oh! do not let us waste the trial Jesus sends.”
St. Thérèse
St. Thérèse
In today’s Gospel, Jesus calls on His disciples to humble themselves by rejecting places of honor, taking the lowest place, and giving generously to those who cannot repay. We all know it isn’t easy to live such a life of complete humility. Most of us yearn for recognition and appreciation, but rather than grasping for honor, we should accept the humiliation that God sends our way, allowing Him to lift us up to a higher place after a life of humble service.
When it seems difficult to follow our Lord’s call, we can find inspiration in the lives of the saints. Many humble souls, like St. Thérèse of Lisieux and her parents Sts. Louis and Zelie Martin, lived quiet lives of prayer and sacrifice but were raised to heavenly honor after their earthly lives ended.
Near the end of his life, St. Louis Martin suffered perhaps the greatest humiliation of all: the loss of his mental faculties. The effects of several strokes and vascular brain disease included confusion, depression, anxiety, memory loss, and erratic behavior. Although his mind was dimmed, in moments of clarity, St. Louis affirmed his willingness to bear the cross of mental illness, saying “I know why the Good God has given me this trial: I have never had any humiliations in my life, and I need to have some… This trial is a mercy. I am here to atone for my pride.”
St. Thérèse and her sisters also accepted their father’s affliction as a gift of grace. Her sister Celine, charged with his care, wrote, “I want… to thank God for the bitterness of our humiliations… For did not He Himself pass through all humiliations?” In her autobiography, St. Thérèse said of this time of trial, “Precious and sweet was this bitter cross… We no longer walked - we ran, we flew along the path of perfection.”
With God’s grace, may we accept all the humiliation we are asked to bear as precious and sweet, confident that the Lord will use each tear we shed and each cross we bear to lift us to eternal glory and eternal joy in His presence.
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