Lord, Make Me Meek And Humble Of Heart

I have described my blog as a place for Catholic musings. Today I'd like to muse on humility. It is something that has been on my mind a great deal lately, and I have also had some difficulty in practicing it as well.
According to the Catholic Dictionary, the virtue of humility may be defined as: "A quality by which a person considering his own defects has a lowly opinion of himself and willingly submits himself to God and to others for God's sake."
The saints also had much to say about this virtue. Here are just a few saintly examples.
St. John Vianney: “Humility is the various virtues what the chain is in a rosary. Take away the chain and the beads are scattered; remove humility, and all virtues vanish.”
St. Augustine said: “If you should ask me what are the ways of God, I would tell you that the first is humility, the second is humility, and the third is humility. Not that there are no other precepts to give, but if humility does not precede all that we do, our efforts our meaningless.”
St. Teresa of Avila said, “It constantly happens that the Lord permits a soul to fall so that it may grow humbler. When it is honest, and realizes what it has done, and returns, it makes ever-increasing progress in our Lord’s service.”
Now those are some pretty tough acts to follow, but the one thing that can be heard in the voices of these great saints as well as countless others, is that humility is essential for spiritual growth.
I guess if I had to put it simply, humility is knowing that God is God and that I am definitely not.
Now all of that is easy to say, practicing it is quite another story. Prideful person that I can be, I can easily fall into the "it's all about me" syndrome. I do take some comfort in the fact that the saints weren't saints when they walked upon this earth and probably had a difficult time with this all important virtue as well.
The one thing I learned very quickly when I began taking the practice of my faith seriously was that when you pray for things like humility, God loves to answer these prayers and He seems to do so more quickly than I'd like at times. In order to be able to practice humility so as to become a more humble person, we need humiliations. Those are not usually pleasant, but they are effective.
In my own life, our Lord has seen fit to answer this prayer in everything from allowing me to trip and fall over my own two feet on a busy sidewalk, to more subtle humiliations of simply letting someone else take the credit and glory for something they may or may not be responsible for. In any of these situations, I find myself fighting that internal battle that causes me to bite my tongue and take the lowest place. The consolation in this is that I know that it pleases God, and that is all that should matter.
However, there are those times when pride gets the best of me and I lose the battle; then it's off to confession so that I can receive the forgiveness I need as well as the grace to persevere a little better the next time. Much of the time though, I just seem to be fighting that internal battle of knowing what I ought or ought not to do, and not giving in to the pride and self~love. When the battle really heats up I turn to the Litany of Humility. This prayer is not always easy to pray and mean, but it does cover most, if not all those areas of my life where I would rather put me first. Mother Teresa of Calcutta and her Sisters of Charity would pray this prayer daily.
I was first introduced to the prayer when I began serving as a team member for Rachel's Vineyard retreats. We, as team members, are asked by our facilitator to pray this prayer often, even daily if possible.
As difficult as the prayer is to pray sincerely, I do find it helpful in practicing this sometimes elusive, but necessary virtue.
In addition to prayer, we have great examples of humility in the saints, and even greater examples in the life of Jesus and His Blessed Mother. So when pride begins to rear its ugly head I know where and to whom to turn for help.
I will fight the battle to become more humble most likely for my entire lifetime, but hopefully it will make me a saint.

The Litany of Humility
O Jesus! meek and humble of heart, Hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed,
Deliver me, Jesus.

From the desire of being loved...
From the desire of being extolled ...
From the desire of being honored ...
From the desire of being praised ...
From the desire of being preferred to others...
From the desire of being consulted ...
From the desire of being approved ...
From the fear of being humiliated ...
From the fear of being despised...
From the fear of suffering rebukes ...
From the fear of being calumniated ...
From the fear of being forgotten ...
From the fear of being ridiculed ...
From the fear of being wronged ...
From the fear of being suspected ...

That others may be loved more than I,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

That others may be esteemed more than I ...
That, in the opinion of the world,
others may increase and I may decrease ...
That others may be chosen and I set aside ...
That others may be praised and I unnoticed ...
That others may be preferred to me in everything...
That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should…
(Rafael Cardinal Merry del Val, 1865~1930)