LIVING IN THE TRUTH

 I've recently been enjoying Michael Casey's book A Guide to Living in the Truth: Saint Benedict'sTeaching on Humility. Despite its specialized-sounding title, its 225 pages are packed with wisdom for authentic human living that is applicable to everyone. 

I'd like to offer some excerpts from pages 18-22. 

Truth-filled living is the soul of humility. It is characterized by an attitude of realism. Humility is, above all, a respect for the nature of things, a reluctance to force realith to conform to subjective factors in ourselves, Applied to human reality, truths various zones of application can be summarized under the following four headings. These can also be regarded as the foundation of an attitude to life that is characterized by humility. [Note: Casey does not number the four headings, the numbers are mine.] 

I  WE ARE NOT DIVINE

In the Garden of Eden the first temptation succeeded because it promised that we should become gods. This desire is the essence of pride. We want to deny our earthly origins with their consequences of vulnerability, weakness, labor, social constraint. and limitation...

Whatever gnaws away at our capacity to be happy in the restricted possib8ilities  normal human life offers may be labeled as the opposite of humility, that is "pride." ...

In for getting that we are not gods, pride also makes us expect too much from ourselves. Many people cannot forgive themselves for being human: for their slowness of mind and ineffectiveness of will.

II WE ARE CREATURES

The recognition of our earthly nature leads us to affirm that our fundamental relationship with God is one of dependence. We are not the source of our own being ...

Truth in prayer, worship and service of God is characterized by the realization that all that we have comes from God ...

Like children who buy Christmas gifts for their parents with money received from them, we can give nothing to God that has not first been God's gift. ,,,

There is a space in us that can be filled only by God. There is a certain spiritual potentiality that never comes alive if we are locked in a world of self-sufficiency. ...

III WE ARE SINNERS 

... None of us is blameless. None of us is in a morally neutral state ... We bear within our very being the traces of past infidelity and self-centeredness. As a result we approach God as people who have deformed creation by our futile efforts to replace the reign of God with some silly semblance of self-determination. Sinfulness is not the whole truth about the human condition, but it is certainly a reality. Nobody wants to admit being a sinner, so most of us have to make a conscious effort to discover the reality of sin that is hidden beneath the surface of our well-meaning lives,. Otherwise we quickly slide into delusion.

Here is is important to realize that we are speaking of sin more as a theological reality and less as the experience of personal guilt.. We are not identifying humanity or human weakness with sin. Instinctual thoughts and desires, no matter how disreputable, are not sin, Sin is the free preference for evil over goodness.  ...

Sin is, fundamentally, the denial of our nature.

IV WE ARE STALLED HUMAN BEINGS

None of us has had an uninterrupted journey through life. We have all had bad experiences which have led us astray, slowed us down, brought us to a halt ... Sometimes these are caused by others, sometimes they are aided and abetted by ourselves. As a result, we adults carry within ourselves a measure of woundedness, although we are rarely conscious of its full magnitude. The fact is that we have not progressed to the extent of our innate [potentialities.

Humility involves the acceptance of the liabilities of our personal history as reality.

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I hope some of these excepts have been helpful, or may even have encouraged you to read Fr. Casey's entre book.