Category: Heart

Why is humility the ’mother of all virtues’

“Humility is the root, mother, nurse, foundation, and bond of all virtue”

St. John Chrysostom

We begin our Triodion journey with the powerful and timeless example of the Publican’s humility and the Pharisee’s pride. We cannot manifest any of the virtues authentically without God. Without humility, we find ourselves isolated and alone without what we most need. With humility , we open the door of our hearts to the Triune God and our thirst for the true sustainability of the living water of His mercy and grace.

I love Father Thomas Hopko’s description of humility as “seeing reality as it is in God”. And in this reality , we can see each of our breaths as an unceasing reminder of our dependence and reliance on Him. In this deepening awareness and vision of His moment by moment grace that enlivens us ; we have a chance to see more clearly our ‘right size’ and become more open to the majesty of His.

We cannot authentically produce any virtue without this foundation of humility that allows this flow from God to us. The distortion of what we believe we are producing autonomously in good without Him is simply not real ; it is the vanity and ignorance of what we imagine. Our vanity and ignorance separate us from His Holy Spirit as the ‘giver of life’ who is ‘everywhere present and filling all things’. With this distortion of what we see as a reality without God, we ease God out (EGO) of our daily consciousness as well as the vision and experience of how we live our lives. We place ourselves in the center of our lives instead of God.

We can now see in our Church Fathers the ’inner coherence’ and great wisdom in placing the Publican and Pharisee as our first encounter in the Triodion. Whatever good we may experience in Lent will rely and depend upon its birth from this ‘mother’ of humility and our openness to be ’with God’ in the whatever of our lives.

The short extract below from Father Thomas Hopko also reminds us that Christ in his Triune relationship is our perfect model and demonstration of humility.

Volume IV – Spirituality … The Virtues … Humility by Father Thomas Hopko

In the Orthodox tradition, humility has often been called the “mother of all virtues,” and pride has been named “the cause of all sin.” The wise and honest person is the one who is humble.

Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

It is better to be of a lowly spirit with the poor, than to divide the spoils with the proud.

A man’s pride will bring him low, but he who is lowly in spirit will retain honor 

Proverbs 16.18, 16.19, 29.23

According to the Gospel, in the Song of the Virgin, the Lord scatters the proud in the imagination of their hearts and exalts those who are humble and meek (cf. Lk 1.51–52). This is the exact teaching of Jesus.

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted (Lk 14.11, 18.14, Prov 3.34).

Humility does not mean degradation or remorse. It does not mean effecting some sort of demeaning external behavior. It does not mean considering oneself as the most vile and loathsome of creatures. Christ Himself was humble and He did not do this. God Himself, according to the spiritual tradition of the Church, has perfect humility, and He certainly does not act in this way.

Genuine humility means to see reality as it actually is in God. It means to know oneself and others as known by God—a power, according to Saint Isaac, greater than that of raising the dead! The humble lay aside all vanity and conceit in the service of the least of God’s creatures, and consider no good act as beneath one’s dignity and honor. Humility is to know oneself, without the grace of God, as dust, sinful and dead.

God is humble because He cares about the least: the birds in the air, the grass in the fields, the worst of sinners (cf. Mt 6.25–30). Christ is humble because He associates with the lowly, becoming the slave of all in taking on Himself the sins of the world.

If I then, your Lord and Master have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you (Jn 13.14–15).

You know that the rulers of the pagans lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave; even as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many (Mt 20.25–28).

All Christians are to follow the example of Christ in His divine humility. Saint Paul teaches:

Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility count others better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which you have in Christ Jesus, who though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2.3–11).

The exaltation of Jesus as a man depended entirely on His self-emptying humility. True greatness, divine greatness, is the ability to be the least and do the least with the absolute certitude that it is externally and divinely important, that it is an imitation of God Himself.

True humility for the sinful man is to know that indeed, according to one’s own possibilities and gifts, each one is truly the first and greatest of sinners (cf. 1 Tim 1.15), for each one has sinned in his own way “like no other man” (Saint Andrew of Crete, 7th c., Penitential Canon). The truly humble person is the one who, confessing his sins, is “faithful over little,” and doing so, is exalted by the Lord and is “set over much.” Only such a person will “enter into the joy of his Master” (Mt 25.14–23, Lk 19.17).

What do I truly treasure?

Our actions, attitudes, and awareness have a lot to teach us about what we honestly treasure in the depths of our hearts. I find this article by Father Stephen Freeman entitled ’The Treasures of the Heart’ very helpful as I enter this Pre-Lenten period and desire to see more clearly, with God’s help, the truth of what lies within me. I’ve created a slightly shortened extract of the full article below. I hope this may help you reflect and gain some clarity about this important question that we can ask and perhaps even answer right now today.

The Treasures of the Heart – Father Stephen Freeman

A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks. 

Matthew 12:34-35

Christ’s teaching on the heart points to it as the very center of our life. He does not describe it as inherently good or inherently bad. It is inherently central. It is that place in the core of our existence from which all words and actions flow. And so Christ tells us simply that if the treasure of our heart is good – it will be evidenced by the good things we say and do – and, conversely, if the treasure of our heart is evil – it, too, will be evidenced by the evil things we say and do. What we should take from this is the realization that we are daily laying up treasure (good or evil) in the heart.

I recently gave some thought to St. Macarius’ saying on the treasures of the heart – that we find dragons and lions, poisonous beasts, etc., and that we find God, the angels, the life and the kingdom, the heavenly cities and the treasuries of grace. My thoughts stayed with his imagery as I walked myself through the day. It was obvious that over the course of the day I myself added to the treasures of my heart – and to some extent – others added to that treasure as well.

One image that came to me was travel on our busy freeways. In East Tennessee it seems that our interstate highway system is in a constant state of “under construction.” At times traffic is heavy, too fast, and frightening (especially if you add in cell-phone usage and the like as we zip along at freeway speeds). The image that came to mind was of cars barreling down the highway with dragons and lions and poisonous beasts pouring out the windows as travelers cursed one another on their daily commute. “Road rage” is a common phenomenon all across the nation. I wondered how we would react if we could actually see the “treasures” of our heart pouring out of our cars.

The same image could be applied across the whole of the day. For we are either bringing forth good out of the treasure of a good heart or pouring out dragons from the treasure of an evil heart.

There was an additional thought. The nature of the heart’s treasure is their inexhaustibility. When we pour forth our treasure we do not see its decrease. Quite the opposite – dragons begat dragons. And in the same way, every act of kindness of mercy does not diminish the kindness and mercy of our heart but multiplies them. Kindness begats kindness.

And so it is that over the course of every day we not only nurture the treasure of our own heart (for good or ill), we also add, or attempt to add, to the treasures of those around us. Some of the poisonous beasts that I find within my heart have been dwelling there a long time – placed there even when I was a child.

And so a significant question for all of us (daily) is: what treasure do I share with others?

Meditating on such imagery should also drive us deeper into repentance (not guilt, but repentance). What am I doing with the beasts that inhabit my heart? Frequent confession – telling the truth about the state of my heart is important. But equally important (perhaps more so) is the attention we should give to the good treasures that are so lacking. Every act of kindness and mercy, every effort towards forgiveness of everyone for everything, does not exhaust the heart but stores up good treasures in the presence of the good God. Avoiding evil is an effort not to do something. I always find that such efforts alone are very weak indeed. The man who is busy being kind cannot be busy being evil. One of the powers of goodness is that it actually has substance rather than absence. And so St. Paul exhorts us, “Overcome evil by doing good” (Romans 12:21).

Dragons depart ….