Surprise and Humility

Once in a while I'm surprised by grace. It just goes to show how little I actually believe in the faithfulness of God.

Yesterday I suffered through a mis-communication with another friar. My schedule of things to do was disrupted and I felt a little slighted. So immediately comes the temptation to all kinds of afflictive emotions: self-criticism, anger, bitterness, acedia, etc.

Instead I just quietly returned to some other work and put my mind and heart into something else. I'm not usually able to brush things off so easily. It's because I'm not yet humble.

And here we enter into one of those paradoxical truths of the spiritual life. When people fail to treat us according to our unrealistic and idiosyncratic expectations, we are reminded of how little humility we actually have. But the acceptance of how impoverished we are spiritually can propel us into true spiritual humility.