Taking the Lowest Place
"I do not want you to compare yourself to those
greater or lesser than you, to a particular few, not even to a single person,
etc." (Saint Bernard)
The gloss comments, "Pride is
the last vice to leave those returning to God and the first to greet those
leaving God behind." Someone has put it well: Although you are fighting
well and think you have uprooted everything, pride still threatens to
recontaminate you and must therefore be conquered. For the proud enemy uses
pride from the start to make a man who is eager to hurry to heaven think that
he amounts to something in the Lord's eyes or in the eyes of certain men, to
think that he is more virtuous and less given to vices than he really is - and
to have just the opposite opinion of others. In this light it is a great grace
to steady the heart (Hebr 13:9) and, by steady humility, to acquiesce to the
Word of God that says, When you are invited to a wedding feast, sit down in the
lowest place (Lk 14:10) and Esteem others better than yourself (Phil 2:3). Let
us then humbly and pragmatically put into practice the advice Saint Bernard
rightly gives in his sermon on the Canticle, "I do not want you to compare
yourself to those greater or lesser than you, to a particular few, not even to
a single person, etc." For we do not even know for sure what state we are
in or what shall become of us tomorrow - much less can we know the truth about
others. We are all created by one Creator, who establishes the members of the
Body of Christ not according to our judgements but according to his own
knowledge.
Guigo de Ponte (d. 1297)
was a Carthusian monk of the Grande Chartreuse in the French Alps.
was a Carthusian monk of the Grande Chartreuse in the French Alps.