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I am so pleased to have had the opportunity to spend another few weeks with you. But why does it always have to be at the hottest time of the year? Once again, I’m struck by how welcoming and friendly this little island is.

In particular, I learn lessons in humility from the devotion of Christians whom I meet here. So I thought it appropriate to mark my time here this year by some thoughts on humility. Humility is a peculiarly Christian virtue.

The Romans and Greeks who lived before Christ – and all earlier civilizations – admire worldly success, military prowess, beauty and intellect. They wouldn’t have even understood humility, nor does our own era.

No one wins a medal for being humble. In today’s competitive world, one is sent on assertiveness courses. Yet, humility was the hallmark of Jesus.

Sinless son

The sinless son of God cleansed by John the Baptist in the River Jordan, befriending prostitutes, accepting loaves and fishes from a small boy, washing his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper, submitting to the bullying of the Roman soldiers and the shame and disgrace of the Cross. A passage in St. Paul’s letter to the people of Philippi sums it all up. He quotes what sounds like a hymn about Jesus that had already been compiled within two or three decades of his death:

Being in very nature God,
He made himself nothing,
Taking the very nature of a servant,
In the appearance of man,
He humbled himself…

Our model for humility is Jesus himself. It’s been said that, for God to become man, it’s like us becoming a cockroach. That’s a measure of Jesus’ humility.

Despite having our model in front of us, it remains difficult to describe humility in a human being. It’s not modesty, not self-disgust, not a sense of inferiority. It isn’t measuring yourself against another human being but against God.

Utter dependence

Humility comes from seeing the world through God’s eyes, from knowing our own utter dependence on His grace, from seeing the gulf that separates his holiness and his goodness from our puny efforts. It’s facing the truth about who God is and who I am. It’s remembering Psalm 8:

When I consider your heavens,
The work of your fingers,
The moon and the start,
Which you have set in place,
What is man that you are mindful of him?

The more we learn of the immensity of the universe, solar system, to infinity, the more we’re in awe and wonder that God cares for even the hairs on our heads. In particular terms, what does being humble mean? It means:

Not being self-centred or feeling superior;
Putting aside status and personal advancement as goals;
No demanding your rights and forgetting yaour duties;
Acknowledging that none of us is self-sefucient;
Being ready to admit mistakes and learn;
Accepting God’s will.

In relationship to others, it means being alongside them both in needs, failures, shame and despair and in hopes, successes, joys and strengths; being aware of what other people have to offer; being willing to depend on the kindness and love of others. It adds up to a life of service to others which can only be achieved by a simple openness to God and, through him, to fellow women and men.

12 degrees of humility

St. Augustine wrote : “The whole of the Christian religion is humility”. St. Benedict, in his rule for monks, set out 12 degrees of humility. The people of the Middle Ages in Europe knew more about humility than we do.

St Francis of Assisi founded an order in which he called his friars, minors and the superiors of the order, servants. He gave them the motto: “Whoever wishes to be great among you, let him be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you will be your slave”.

There can, of course, be false humility. This isn’t only the hand-wringing cringing of the Charles Dickens character, Uriah Heap, but also, more subtly, as St. Francis of Sales said: “True humility makes no pretence of being humble and scarcely ever utters words of humility. Equally, it’s difficult to make yourself humble by acts of will.

It’s a quality that flavours what a person does. It’s a by product, given obliquely, of consistently trying to love God and your neighbour. It was the late Cardinal Basil Hume, making a pun on his own name who pointed out that “human” and the Latin word “humus” – “earth” “dirt” – comes from the same root.

We’re as dirt when set against the holiness and goodness of God. In the last resort, humility in a human comes from knowing how much she or he owes to the grace of God in our Lord Jesus. In Jesus we’ve our pattern: “…take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart.” Matthew 11:29