Disconected ideas of humility

Note: I first posted this a while back, and am now reposting it here, because for some reason I like it.

I am reading "Transformation in Christ" by Deitrich Von Hildebrand for my Philosophy of Ethics class, and it is making a profound impact in my life. I wish I could keep things in my brain long enough to discuss them, but, unhappily, my brain is mush and refuses to function correctly. I think I've abused it for too long. Perhaps 5-6 hours of sleep is not enough, and worrying about family, work, money, etc. are too much. Somehow, I can't help thinking that I'll have plenty of time to sleep when I'm dead. ;-)

In any case, the current chapter addresses an issue that I've been concerned about for a while: Humility. It seems that it is especially fitting for a woman to strive for humility, especially for the young women of our times as they are being constantly told to masculinize themselves, to want to fight, to have a career and climb that divine corporate ladder. We have to be "independent" of patriarchal infrastructure. If this is what I am to strive for (a life independent of a man where my children are raised in daycare and prep-school while I chase the everlasting dollar and speak out for my right to do whatever I please, wearing uncomfortable shoes and designer suits all day), I have a tired, cold, deplorable existence to look forward to. It seems that there is nothing to be said for the woman who just wants to be present to her family and to God. To the woman who actually has this old-fashioned desire to cook, clean, make clothes, tend gardens/crops, nurse her babies and actually carry them around with her... What the dickens is she thinking! Letting herself sink willfully into oblivion! No one will remember her, and she is not doing an iota for the economy. Humility is horrendous.

I disagree. Furthermore, I despise retail and office work, both of which I am presently employed in. (ugh!)

That unconnected bit of oddity up there was a reflection of my poor, muddled brain on an issue that is, in my opinion, connected to humility. After all, was not Our Blesses Lady the most humble of persons, and was she not a woman who was present to her husband and children, who did such menial tasks as making clothes, tending a garden, scraping together enough funds to care for the physical needs of her family? She has not sunk into oblivion…yet, and we must keep it that way. I know there are certain schools of thought out there that claim that the lovely prayer, the Magnificat, is a speech about Mary's disgust with the wealthy (He has cast down the might from their thrones and lifted up the lowly) and she is a Marxist, but this piece of disturbance is just stupid, not to mention insulting, uninformed, unscholarly, etc.

Von Hildebrand and St. Francis de Sales say that the highest of human virtues is humility, just as love, a divine virtue, is the highest virtue of all. Humility is the source and foundation of all human virtues and is the presupposition of the beauty of all virtue. If the greatest of the three cardinal virtues is Love, and humility is the greatest of the human virtues, there must be a good deal of congruence between them. It seems that they must always coincide: where one is present, the other is also. Good gracious! I hope in that case that I am at least a little bit humble!

Pride and concupiscence are the two great enemies that live within us and harm our ability to be humble, but pride is the worse of the two (is that grammatically correct?). Concupiscence is more a matter of nature, is born in us, and we have nothing to do with it’s existence in us, except insofar as we overcome or encourage it. Pride, however, though it may come naturally as well, is largely brought into being by our own efforts, and it is very difficult to overcome. I have found, in my experience and my reading, that many a holy and genuinely good was tainted by one thing only: pride. The truly beautiful women I have met, the ones that I really want to be like, who seem to be very happy in their state in life, are the ones who are very humble. They are totally self-disinterested, and are always...I don't know! They seem to have an aura about them, when one feels like saying "Now here is a queen." Images of Our Lady, the true mother of all, and the Model of Women, Exemplar of Humility, and the Lady of Love.