To turn our backs on our own desires is not to become less fully ourselves. It is to loosen the grip of the false self—the self that insists on having its own way, protecting its own importance, feeding its own appetites. Benedict asks us instead to pray with Christ: not my will, but yours be done.
“Guard me, Lord, from my wicked ways.” Purge from me whatever narrows the heart, whatever turns me inward, whatever keeps me from becoming the person you created me to be. Teach me to nourish the soul rather than endlessly satisfying the self.
But humility must never become despair. We are not prisoners of some essential weakness, doomed always to fail and forever separated from God. Our weakness may reveal our need for grace, but grace calls us beyond it. The spiritual life is not an acceptance of mediocrity. It is an awakening to possibility.
Sister Joan Chittister writes that “humility lies in knowing who we are and what our lives are meant to garner.” And there lies the beautiful paradox: true humility does not tell us that we are nothing. It tells us what we are for.
We are made to grow beyond ourselves.
We are made for holiness.
We are made for greatness—not the greatness of power, possession, or praise, but the greatness of love.
We are made for God.
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