I am told that there was once a Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster who was called to give expert evidence in a court case, and he was asked the following introductory questions: “Are you the Archbishop of Westminster?” “I am,” he answered. “Are you the leading Roman Catholic in this country?” Again, “I am.” “Is it true that you are an outstanding scholar?” “It is,” he said. “Are you the most trustworthy and experienced person in this country to give expert advice about the matter of this trial?” “I suppose I am,” he responded. When the case was over, one of the Archbishop’s friends asked him about his answers. “Your Eminence,” he said, “your answers were not very humble, were they?” And the Archbishop answered, “But what else could I say? I was under oath.” . . .
God created you and me for His own glory. At first sight this may appear to be a sort of divine selfishness, but since God is pure love, and love is unselfishness, if God creates something or someone for His glory, it means that He does it in order to give away love or glory to that creature. If God had created us for our own glory and not His, we should have had the appalling destiny of worshipping ourselves and being wrapped up in ourselves for ever, but we were created to share God’s life and to be wrapped up in Him forever. Whatever expressing humility takes in our life, it will not entail denying the incredible dignity God has given us in making us able to give glory to Him Whose glory is love. The whole of our true life and the whole of our faith and the whole of our vocation is a matter of love given and received, so it is very necessary to think of our spiritual life and its implications and its expressions and practices in connection with love. . .
In his Letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul makes this remarkable prayer, and it is part of inspired Scripture and must be a good and effective prayer, a prayer for something that we may expect to come about if we are faithful: “This, then, is what I pray, kneeling before the Father, from Whom every family, whether spiritual or natural takes its name: Out of infinite glory, may He give you the power through His Spirit for your hidden self to grow strong, so that Christ my live in your hearts through faith, and then, planted in love and built on love, you will, with all the saints, have strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth, until knowing the love of Christ which is beyond all knowledge, you are filled with the utter fullness of God.” . . .
We need profound humility if we are to make way within us for our hidden self to grow strong and become all that is implied in St. Paul’s prayer, which is no more than a prayer for us to become authentic Christians. We have to make way for Christ to dwell in us by not letting ourselves take up all the room in us. But humility does not demand or permit us to forget the very great dignity that God has given us by dwelling in us not just as God, but as our Father, and as God’s Son incorporating us as sons and daughters, and as Holy Spirit, making us cry out truthfully, “Abba, Father.” . . .
We are meant to be filled with the utter fullness of God, and what a great, serious, dignified, and worthwhile life that is. It is a life lived in the house of God, in God’s home. There are many rooms in that home, many mansions in the kingdom of God, so we do not all have anything like the same work to do, the same prayers to make, the same importance in our works, judged by human standards. But each of us, no matter what our place in life is, or what our energy is like, or how ever small our works may be, each of us has this tremendous importance, . . . not because we are great or influential and so on, but because God is our Father, which means we are one with His Son, and the power of the Holy Spirit is at work within us. Anyone in the state of grace and not in the state of sin is in this situation.
We are living in a very secular world, a world without reverence even for innocent human life, and still less for God the Father and His Son and the pure Holy Spirit. It is impossible for a Christian to be faithful in this modern world if in any way he is lukewarm about his faith. We need to pray and meditate and make ourselves aware of the very great dignity and responsibility we have as children of God the Father and of what a serious life we should lead, using our time worthily.
The greatness of our vocation and the seriousness of our responsibility should not frighten us. We are meant to live like little children, and little children do not feel under pressure or afraid or burdened with responsibility. They look to their parents and trust in them and obey them and love them and live in peace. So should we.
