How Can We Practice Humility with the Desert Fathers?

Meditation was so central to the spiritual lives of the Desert Fathers and Mothers that it can serve as an excellent model for us. They have so much to teach us, for they experienced—both in their communal lives and in their solitude in the desert—everything that every human being faces during their earthly existence. They are physicians of the soul—a soul they strove to observe closely within themselves and in their brothers. Using highly metaphorical language—much like the parables of Christ, from whose time they were not so far removed—they describe the twists and turns of the soul and the struggles it faces. Vanity, pride, charity, and prayer are their daily themes of reflection, observation, and meditation, and they still have much to teach us today. Today, let’s see how they speak to us about humility, a virtue essential to every Christian life.

What is humility according to the Fathers?

Humility is defined as a willingness to lower oneself by suppressing any inclination toward pride and acknowledging one’s own weakness. But be careful: humility has nothing to do with humiliation in the sense of self-deprecation. “Self-doubt is not humility; I even believe that it is sometimes the most exalted, almost delusional form of pride,” Georges Bernanos tells us. Amma Syncletica, a Desert Mother, asserts that humility is the “prerequisite for the growth of the spiritual life.” She adds: “Just as it is impossible to build a ship without nails, so too is it impossible to save oneself without humility.” It is the antidote to the most pervasive spiritual illness, pride, which consists, among other things, in being self-centered and unable to contemplate realities other than those presented to us by our senses and our psyche.

Another Desert Father made humility his hallmark. This was John Colobos (339–409). He stated: “Humility and the fear of God are far above all other virtues.”

How can we practice humility today?

Humility also encompasses a form of simplicity and moderation—a very contemporary concept in a world where material abundance is wreaking havoc on the planet and in people’s minds.

Here are a few ways to practice humility today, to be followed according to our abilities.

• Seek guidance in your spiritual life. This allows you to listen to someone else and, under another’s guidance, to receive their advice.
• Remember God’s blessings and graces. Live in gratitude.
• Recognize your strengths and weaknesses, your failures, and the harm you may have caused.
• Value, serve, and  listen to those around us.
• Accept criticism without reacting.
• Rejoice in the success of others.
• Remember our mortal nature.
• We can also draw inspiration from the verse in Ecclesiastes: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” which speaks more to the vain and futile nature of most things, and the need to remember that everything comes from God and little depends on us.

Paradoxically, by cultivating humility, we foster a certain self-confidence, as Saint Francis de Sales explains: “The proud man who trusts in himself may accomplish nothing, but the humble man is all the more courageous because he knows his own helplessness, and his courage increases in proportion to the low opinion he has of himself, for all his trust is in God, who delights in showing His power in our weakness and His mercy in our misery.”