Humility: To Become Great, Become Small

"My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that You are here, that You see me and that You hear me. I adore You profound reverence. I ask Your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Macchew at Mother, St. Joseph, my Father and Lord, my guardian angel intercede for me. With Your permission, Lord, here, presiding in the blessed sacrament, we begin our recollection, this evening of recollection, the first one for this new year, 2026, and at the beginning of this new year, it's good moment to build a firm foundation for the months ahead. You can consider those words of St. Augustine, which I think for us living in New York cities surrounded by skyscrapers, it's easy for us to have a very visual representation of these words. Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility. And then He says, "If you ask me what is most essential in religion, and in the discipline of Jesus Christ, I will answer first humility, second humility, third humility, fourth. " No, it doesn't continue. He stops there. Not humility, we get the point, humility. Well we can take the example of the three kings, we still have that freshener minds, those three kings that traveled that long distance, and yesterday we contemplated them on bended knee before our Lord, Jesus Christ in the manger. We have the Christ child here, still before us, because we are still in the time of Christmas. Let's not forget, and the liturgical time of Christmas goes all the way to the feast of the baptism of our Lord, which is this coming Sunday. And so we still have the Christ child before us, and in fact there is a little cloth here, because some people like to come and give a little kiss to the Christ child. You can even be like one of those kings and come and stoop down and give a little kiss to the Christ child. And when we stoop down to greet the Christ child, we discover just how much we are loved. We draw forth, draw close to Him, who is the love of God incarnate, unbended knee before this child, Jesus. We ask ourselves the question, or ask our Lord the question, "How much do you love me?" And just our Lord with His mere presence in the flesh, He says this much, and this is just the beginning, and His whole life would be sort of an unraveling or flourishing of that love of God incarnate. Jesus and His humanity reveals to us the love of the Father in the passage, which we read at the beginning of Benedictine, which was from Galatians. We considered how our Lord, at the appointed time, became flesh, so that we might become sons of God, so that we might cry out, "Abba, Father." He has become a child, so that we might become children of God. He has become small, so that we might become great, and that dynamic repeats itself in our lives, to become great, become small. We plan to build a tower that pierces the clouds, lay the foundations in humility. That greatness, which is our divine affiliation, is intimately intertwined with that humility, sort of that awareness of our smallness, or really our nothingness, our creaturely nothingness. It'll be just in a few short weeks where we are reminded, "Remember, man, that you are just, just a cloud of dust." Jesus really likes to use that image, that we are just like dust that's kicked up, and if it shines, it's just because the divine rays illuminate the dust that has been kicked up, but we just, on our own, just dust, pour dust. But at the same time, we are children of God, and so that knowledge of our nothingness and knowledge of our greatness comes, they come together. I think true humility is not just about, you know, I don't know, kicking oneself and saying, "Oh, I'm such a loser, it's not a loser mentality." I think true humility brings with it a sense of confidence, but confidence is not because I am so talented, because I have such great gifts, but because of the love of God, because who am I before sinful, sinful humanity? Who am I before redemption, before salvation, I'm nothing? That salvation, that redemption, is our Lord's sheer gift. San Jose Maria in the Pharaoh, this is 0.122, he says, "You find yourself in a position which seems rather strange. On the one hand, you feel faint-hearted as you look inwards, on the other, sure, encouraged as you look upwards. Don't worry, it's a sign that you are beginning to know yourself better, and more importantly that you are beginning to know Him better." It's like a surprising confluence of motions of the heart. On the one hand, kind of feeling that sort of that awareness of that nothingness, kind of peer into your heart and you see this sort of darkness, but at the same time, you open up your eyes and you see this great light. It's like darkness and light. This is the Ciaroscuto of faith, nothingness and greatness altogether. You feel faint-hearted as you look inwards. You feel your own weaknesses, you feel your own defects. On the other hand, you feel sure, encouraged as you look upwards. It's that love of God that calls you forth, that lifts you up. This self-knowledge is a good place to begin the New Year. Now that humility and self-knowledge that go hand in hand to grow on humility is to grow and self-knowledge, and it's a matter of getting to know our heart, taking a plunge into the mysteries of our heart. Our heart is a mystery to ourselves. We don't even know what's really kind of deep down in the depths of our heart. What do we truly desire? Well we have a sense and intuition, but oftentimes we don't really know. That's part of our spirit of examination of trying to go deeper into our hearts to discern what's truly in there so that we can rectify, so that from the deepest recesses of our soul, we can open ourselves up to our Lord's grace. That's also something that characterizes that life of prayer. And it's very typical that the person who is growing in their life of prayer, they discover more and more kind of, you might say, dark spots in their soul. And so it can almost be discouraging, but that's actually a good indicator that you're actually getting to know yourself better and you're being in a certain sense undissieved. And from that place of truth, then you can change. From that place of truth, you can be converted. There's a wonderful line from Pope Francis's de Lexi-Nos, that document on the heart, on the heart of Christ. He says, "The heart is the locus of sincerity, where deceit and disguise have no place. It usually indicates our true intentions, what we really think, believe and desire, the secrets that we tell no one, in a word the naked truth about ourselves. It is the part of us that is neither appearance or illusion, but is instead authentic, real, entirely who we are. The interior reality of each person is frequently concealed behind a great deal of foliage, which makes it difficult for us not only to understand ourselves." The naked truth about ourselves, we carry these layers of foliage, Pope Francis says, "Yeah, it's interesting to consider how our Lord enters into this world, naked as a naked little child, and he departs naked on the cross. Without any foliage, just the naked truth, Jesus Christ incarnate, the Son of God incarnate given for you, for me. When we make our examination of conscience, we often remain at a kind of a superficial level, an external level, and maybe we have a sense that this that I did, it was bad to do that, like the action, bad action. Action goes against some norm, some criteria, and so I acted wrongly." It's important to recognize that, but that's just the beginning. Oftentimes, we just stop there. We want to go deeper. What are underlying motives, what are underlying attitudes, because that's the more important question. The common, I think, a typical thing is for a father of a family, sometimes dealing with their children, if a father can go through, I don't know, can have an outburst of anger. So a father might say, "I was angry in dealing with my children," but it's easy just to stop there and say, "Well, I just need to control my passions." Okay, true, but there's more. Why? Why are you angry? What is it that's in your heart from which this passion surged? What sort of attitude or expectation is sort of lying down beneath? I don't know, maybe there's the sort of sense that life owes me more, or this child owes me more, kind of a lack of understanding. So if that's the case, this is more interesting, so it's not just a question of controlling my passions, but really about changing my vision the way I see, the way I look at reality, the way I look at myself, the way I look at God, the way I look at people. Notice that conversion is oftentimes, it's more about that change of vision. And a few days we'll celebrate the feast of our Lord's baptism. And with our Lord's baptism, our Lord descends into our humanity. He descends into our heart, that heart that we want to descend into. And he rises from the waters, and in rising he shows us our true worth, our true dignity. He is the Son of God, and we are children of God, we are made children of God, and His baptism, which is ultimately the baptism of His passion, death and resurrection, of which the baptism in the Jordan is sort of a symbolic beginning. This is from the book of the gospel coin to Matthew. Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan, to John, to be baptized by him, saying, John, sorry, John would have prevented him saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and you come to me." So John is perplexed. I know that you, the Messiah, are coming to me to baptize you. But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now." For thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. We see our Lord's humility there. He sort of gets in line. He gets in line with the people who are being baptized. Once again, that self-empting in which he enters into our humanity becomes one of us. Like St. Paul says to the Philippians, "It becomes a servant, takes the form of a servant, becomes like us in all things but sin." And so our Lord tells John, "Let it be so now, I need to do this. I want to do this. This is good. This is necessary. I need to be baptized by you because I want to share completely in the humanity of my children." And so John consents, and when Jesus was baptized, he went up immediately from the water and behold, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him in low a voice from heaven saying, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased." And we consider how our Lord descends in solidarity with humanity and together with humanity he rises. And so when those words of God our Father are spoken is not just to Jesus Christ is only begotten Son, but to all of the children of God who are there kind of taken up by Christ and his humanity. This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. Lord you descend into the waters which symbolize our humanity. Those waters they symbolize chaos, they symbolize death, and water has that kind of double meaning of both death and life, but that chaos that death into which our Lord at descends is symbolic of our sinful nature. And so we consider that the scent of our Lord into our humanity, he did not just come a cute little baby, which kind of is very tender and moving and we can imagine ourselves kind of holding the baby in our arms, but he plunges into the darkness of our humanity. He descends into the stormy waters of our hearts, even those places where we're reluctant to go, which we still haven't really discovered. We think about the storms that we often feel in our own minds and our own hearts, well, it's a very consoling consideration. I am not alone, Lord, you are there with me. You descended into the stormy waters, stormy clouds of my own heart. You plunged into that storm. And we think about more on the surface just the challenges that we face, the craziness of our days, complicated situations, complicated relationships. Our Lord is there. He's there in the chaos of our humanity, in the chaos of our history, because when our Lord descends into our humanity, it's not just the flesh, but it's we are creatures that have a story, so he descends into our story. He is there. He is there to rise with us. And him plunging into those waters, it's symbolic of his passion, of his passion and death, further along as he's traveling about with his disciples. He will say it's not at one point. I came to cast fire upon the earth, and we're already kindled. He expresses that yearning for carrying out that work of redemption, and then he says, "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how I am constrained until it is accomplished." It's kind of like what he said to John, "I need to be baptized. I want to be baptized. Take me down into that water, that baptism which is symbolic of his death on the cross, and so that yearning for baptism is that yearning of the firm for to pour out himself for our salvation for our redemption, and that characterise our Lord's whole life." So he descends into those waters at baptism with that same holy enthusiasm to pour himself out on the cross, and he invites us to take up our cross. He invites us to follow him, and that's when we are baptized, that baptism is a baptism into his death and resurrection, which then needs to play itself out in our life. So over the course of our lifetime, it's going to be to share in his death and life, but only with our free acceptance of it. He invites us to take up our cross. Jesus told his disciples, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me." Forever it would save his life, will lose it, and whoever loses his life from Isaac will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? Challenging words of our Lord, but this is very much the core of our Christian life, sharing in the death and resurrection of Christ. And that's the path to life, that's the path to becoming Christian in the full sense. That's the path becoming sons of God, San Jose Maria, in the central, the prolatic church in Rome. Some of you might have been there, it's called Our Lady of Peace. In that church at the entrance to it, the holy water font is the baptismal font, in which San Jose Maria himself was baptized. So that baptismal font had been in the cathedral in Barbostro, in Spain, where San Jose Maria was born and lived the first few years of his life, and so he was baptized in that baptismal font, and during the Spanish Civil War, the communist forces took over that part of Spain, and they destroyed many of the churches, and they ripped out that baptismal font and threw it in the river. It's sad for some time, and after the war, and the people recovered it, they realized that this was the great affection that San Jose Maria had for his hometown. And they said, Monsignoros Crival, we have this, would you like it? And so he accepted it, they got it fixed up, and so that baptismal font is at the entrance of the church, and so many times when he would walk into the church, he would stop, he would touch it, kiss it, and it says, "It gives me a lot of joy to know that this is where I became Christian." And I think this is, in large part, just the spirituality of Opus Dei is just trying to help people to wake up to their dignity as Christians, that with our baptism, we have been made sons of God. We don't need any further consecrations or to become saints. We've already been, already received that consecration with our baptism. And so it's just the spirituality of Opus Dei is just trying to help us to become aware of that, and just to live it out in our ordinary life. And by so doing, also remind all other Christians that they too, they don't need anything else to become a saint, just in certain sense, a turn of their freedom. I'm just a certain saying, "Yes to God." Our Lord invites us to take up the cross. He invites us to a life of sacrifice, a life of self-renunciation, it's not about seeking pain for its own sake, but it's just in our fallen state, giving ourselves is often, perhaps most of the time, painful, because we feel the resistance of pride. And then our pride creates these messy situations which we then have to navigate. And so there are difficulties outside of ourselves, but then the biggest difficulties are actually inside ourselves. That pride within, that sinfulness within, that darkness within, so it's not just our creaturely nothingness, but it's also our moral nothingness, that moral darkness when we look into our hearts. But Jesus he rises out of the waters and is coming up out of the waters, of course symbolic of his resurrection, and he makes what is ours his own and he invites us to share and what is his. It's that the church fathers would talk about that marvelous exchange. He gives us his divine life. We become sons in the sun. We rise to new life in him. But consider our Lord deep in the water and then coming up. Think about the effort that it required to climb the banks of the River Jordan. That our Lord even very physically in that first baptism, he had to make an effort to climb. To climb up the bank, it can make us consider that this rising to new life business, it's not easy. We think about that in very practical terms in our own life. You might call those heroic minutes, you know, being prompt in our responsibilities and our duties, getting up with the alarm clock, dealing with our responsibilities, taking care of sick children, dealing with those messy family situations, financial pressure, it's very difficult. We're speaking with a young mother one time and she told me, you know, for a while, I've been thinking always about a little bit further along and things will settle down, you know, a little bit further along and we'll finally get settled in the house, a little bit further along and then the child will be born, a little bit further along. And then, and then, and then, and she said, "I realized that moment, it's never going to come and there's actually something quite liberating about that because it's not about waiting until the right moment comes and then we'll start our life of love and peace and joy." But no, it's now, now, right now, in this moment, and the things that we're dealing with, now is a time to love and that's the thing that if our desire is simply to love, to love here and now, then we will take the light in placing ourselves at the service of those that we care about today, now, odye, nunk, even if it's painful, that is my desire. If my desire is to love, then I'm not, I'm not, I'm not thinking about, you know, obviously that love is, you know, is forward-looking and you're trying to do something, but at the same time, the love is real in the moment, you know, I want to give myself now to this person, whether it's our Lord, your spouse, children, and if that love is real, then I both embrace sacrifice, but at the same time, experience joy. The joy of knowing I am being bound to my beloved, regardless of whatever comes from my action, that's secondary, and it matters, it's not that it doesn't matter, it does. When there is true love in the moment, there is both sacrifice and joy, and we think about Jesus as he rises, he has the joy of knowing that he's doing the will of the Father, and he has the joy of knowing that in his rising, climbing up those banks of the river Jordan, that he is giving life to all of his Father's beloved children. And so consider your own struggle, and let's note that as our Lord is physically making an effort to climb the banks of the river Jordan, that the sky opens up above him, and a voice is heard saying, "This is my beloved son, with whom I am well pleased," and it will be the same for us striving to live for the glory of God, striving to live out our divine filiation as beloved children, by embracing the sacrifice, embracing the self-renunciation, going against the grain for the sake of love. We will hear that voice. This is my beloved son, it's in our struggle that that voice kind of comes down upon us. At the end of each day, consider the good things that you do, oftentimes we do an examination conscience, we just get fixated on the bad things. Think about the good things, think about the victories, think about the little renunciations to be a more loving husband, a more loving father, a better worker. While there are failures in your day, there are also victories in your day. Think about those, "Here are our Lord's voice, this is my beloved son, I am proud of him, I am proud of his struggle, it gives me joy," and also I delight in his struggle because that struggle is divine life, that struggle is itself a sharing in my life, because it's insofar as I am pouring my life into my son, my little child, that he is rising, and that rising is manifested in that daily struggle. This is my beloved son, and in our struggle, we quickly realize that we are being carried. We feel like it's us that's making the effort to climb up the bank, but we soon discover that it's Christ's love in us that is making us rise out of the water. Well, blessed mother, you are the daughter of God the Father, awaken in us that sense of our dignity as children of God. And we ask you to teach us to love and to love with our struggle as beloved children of God. I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections and inspirations, which you have communicated to me in this meditation. I ask for your help to put them into effect. My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my Father and Lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.