"To BE MORE LIKE CHRIST"

THE BACKGROUND AND IMPLICATIONS

OF "THREE KINDS OF HUMILI TY"

Introduction

n 1965, shortly after I arrived at Shrub Oak, the philosophate of the New
York Province of the Society of Jesus, to begin studying philosophy as a
Jesuit scholastic, I had my first interview with the man who was to be my
spiritual father. He is a quiet, gentle, kindly person, with extremely bright and
penetrating eyes and a low, somewhat irregular voice; he smiled a good deal but
didn't say very much, letting me try-with my usual intolerance of silence-to
fill the gaps in the conversation. I had just come from the novitiate, and we
talked for a while about how that experience had gone, and about what I
expected, positively and negatively, from philosophy. Then suddenly he
skewered me with a direct question: "What do you think is the heart of
Ignatian spirituality?" I rummaged furiously in my mind, trying to think of
what might be the least stupid thing to say, on the basis of my very limited
experience, and finally answered, "The third degree of humility, I suppose." He
nodded, and didn't seem to disagree.
I am sure I identified Ignatius's famous "consideration" on Three Kinds
of Humility, from the Second Week of the Spiritual Exercises (165-68),1 as a
central expression of his spirituality largely because our novice master had
1 Here and elsewhere I am citing from and using, with minor modernizations, the
English translation of the SpiritU4l Exercises by Louis J. Puhl, S.J. (Newman Press: Westmin
ster, Md., 1959). The section symbol {) refers to the paragraph numbering used in that
e dition.

Brian E. Daley, S.]., a member of the New York Province, is associate professor of
historical theology at Weston Jesuit School of Theology, Cambridge Mass. After graduating
from Fordham University in 1961, he attended Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar. He
entered the Society of Jesus in 1964, studied theology at Frankfurt, and received a D.Phil from
,

Oxford. The Hope of the Early Church..(Cambridge University Press} is one of his publica
tions in the area of patristic theology. His address is Weston Jesuit School of Theology, 3
Phillips Place, Cambridge, MA 02138.

BRIAN

E. DALEY,

"To Be More like Christ

S.J.

suggested as much when explaining its contents to us in the Long Retreat. I

probably suspected it was crucially important. too, because I found it the mo st
d1fficitlt part of the Exercises to understand and make my own, the most
pzzlmg and even threatening aspect of what I had assimilated of the Ignatian.
vmon . If there was an Ignatian mountaintop to be climbed laboriously, or gazed
on from afar, tt must be here!
But I was surely not alone in thinking this passage central to Ignatius's
thought. Joseph de Guibert, for instance, whose Spirituality of the Sodety ofJesus
was regarded by many m the years before Vatican II as the most balanced and
comprehensive synthesis of the Ignatian approach to the life of faith, states quite
simply that "the most faithful interpreters of the saint's thought' all point to
the consideration of Three Kinds of Humility as containing "the quintessence of
that thought": the fusion of a "total supernatural logic," set out with such cool
lucidity in the First Principle and Foundation of the Exercises (23), with a
ps1onate lo ':e of Christ that moves beyond logic and "raises the soul to par
ttc1pate fully m what is the crowning moment of redemptive life, the stripping
and abuse of !Jesus on) the Cross."' For de Guibert the secret of what made
lgnatian spirituality fruitful lay in this synthesis of logic and passion, of
hardhe ade d practicality in living out the Christian Gospel fused with the
.
.
_
enthus1ast1c, even mystical, commitment to embrace Jesus' whole way of life
and death, "in order to conquer the world with him, f or the service and the
glory f the Father ."' The consideration of Three Kinds of Humility, especially
in 1ts 1nv1tat1on to move from the state of indifference, which constitutes the
second kind, to a real person ! preference for "poverty with Christ poor, rather
.
.
than nches, insults with Chnst loaded w1th them, rather than horrors " which
constitutes the third, seemed to de Guibert and many other authoritie to sum
up that mysterious and fruitful Ignatian synthesis.

Today perceptions seem to be different . Despite the enormous amount

of study and publ ication that has accompanied the renewal of our practice in
.
_
_
makng and directmg
the Exercises since 1965, little or nothing has been written
spec1fically about the place of this text in the rhythm of the larger process.
.
_
lgnatian bi bl10graphies hst some twenty-three articles on the Three Kinds of
Hu mility written between 1919 and 1959, some of them substantial pieces by
.
maior authors,' but I know of nothing written specifically on the subject since
.

. 1

Joseph de Guibert, S.J., La spiritualiti de

Un1verstty Press,

Practice (Chicago,
}

Jb;d.

la Compagnie de Jisus (Rome: Gregorian

1953), 164; English translation: The Jesuits: Their Spiritual

1964; reprint, St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources: 1994).

Doctrine and

S e J.-F. Gilmont, S.J., and P. Daman, S.J., IJbliographie Ignati.enne, 1894-1951

.
ran s_-L ?uva1n Desclee de Br ?uer, .1958), 131f.; Paul Begheyn, S.J., and Kenneth Bogart, S.J,,
A B1bl1ography on St. Ignatius s Spiritual Exen::ises)" STUDIES IN 1HE SPIRITUAIJTY OF JESUITS
2J, no. J (May 1991).
4

Vatican IL To some degree, no doubt, this has been part of a general tendency
to emphasize the apostolic aspects of Ignatian spirituality rather than the
ascetical the ecclesial and communitarian rather than the interior and
incommunicably personal, the world-affirming rather than the world-denying.
We want to bring good news of freedom and justice to the world and find it
difficult, perhaps, to see how the humility Ignatius presents to us here fits into
such a message.

Partly, too, our reticence may be due, within the Society of Jesus at
least1 to a certain sense of paradox, even oxymoron, in the notion of "Jesuit
humility." We tend to have a strongly positive image of ourselves as a group, an
almost mystical reverence towards our spiritual and corporate traditions; we
stress success, communicate (perhaps not fully intentionally) a strongly competi
tive spirit to our younger members, and expect our institutions and works to
strive for excellence in every possible way; we identify generosity, perhaps, or
resourceful adaptability or the quest for the magis as central characteristics of
our spirituality-so much so that a real indifference to success or failure, a
deeply felt desire f or obscurity, poverty, and a negative reputation in order to
be more closely associated with Jesus, such as this part of the Exercises appar
ently recommends, may seem to many Jesuits a hypocritical pose, even a
contradiction of our central spiritual identity.

More important still, perhaps, the culture we live in today tends to

regard humility as an ambivalent or even a negative human quality. Preachers of
the Gospel today are consciously concerned with liberation, with proclaiming
equality, with building up the human in every individual or group constituting
society, whatever their gender, race, or social background; we want no one to
think of himself or herself as "lower" than anyone else, any more than we want
them to be regarded as such by others. Contemporary pop.Jar psychology-and
the popular spirituality it draws in its wake-stresses the importance of "feeling
good about yourself," "knowing who you are," affirming your identity
confidently before the world. Perhaps because of the high expectations we place
on ourselves and each other in our more socially open world, egos today seem
peculiarly vulnerable, self-confidence and a secure sense of identity harder to
come by than in ages past; as a result, any brand of spirituality that accepts
failure or values insignificance-that invites us even to seek insignificance as
something positive and perfecting-appears unhealthy to many. In the Christian
tradition, we identify humility with a perversely cultivated lack of self-esteem,
and the tradition that has identified it as a virtue we regard as simply expressing
neurotic negativity, unfounded guilt, -or a piously cloaked ideology of male
domination. And we tend, correspondingly, to suspect the sincerity of openly
self-effacing action, to wonder if another person's apparent willingness to

BRIA

E. DALEY,

S.J.

"To Be More like Christ"

:;;,:;-Y:'.811
sacrifice his or her best interests is really a way of controlling others by induc.
ing guilt for doing what they are most inclined to do.'

Many of us, undoubtedly, have experienced some of this ambivalence ini

the course of exercising our own ministries. "I enjoyed your homily," a female:
student told me earnestly one day last year, after I had celebrated a school
liturgy; "but I really disagree with your statement that Christian discipleship
means 'self.emptying service.' That's just another name for subjugation!" Men.
t1on1ng sacrifice, self-effacement or humility in a sermon will aimost always
touch someone's sensitive nerve, I have discovered, and often results in critical
remarks from an angry worshipper on the way out of church. Contemporary
practice in directing the Spiritual Exercises, too, tends to stress almost
exclusively the need to encourage the retreatant to experience God's
unconditional, unquestioning, all-accepting love; the sense of confrontation and
judgment also aimed at in the meditations of the First Week or the invitation to
be drawn into the diminishments of Jesus' way that plays such an important
part m he Second presents many directors today with an apparently insoluble
puzzle; 1t seems to many to be a part of the Exercises' sixteenth-century cultural
baggage that can best be left at the door. As a result, the consideration of Three
Kinds of Humility that Ignatius offers as an immediate prelude to the election is
today, I suspect, often simply omitted from the program of the Exercises as
misleading or even potentially harmful.
Hence it seems useful to look once again, if only briefly, at the
meanin g of humility in this famous text; to ask what the notion might have
.
nean in the context of the long tradition of Christian spirituality Ignatius had
:
inhemed, and what role the consideration of Three Kinds of Humility plays in
the structure of the Second Week and of the Exercises as a whole. Against this
background, it will be easier and more fruitful to consider what importance

God

In her perceptive Jittle book of reflections on early desert spirituality," To Lave As

ovc;s:

hum ility has for those today who are trying to live out their commitment to
he Gospel of Christ with an Ignauan charism, and more specifically ':'hat
Jesuit humility" might mean in the light of our recent general congregauons
and in the shifting limits and opportunities of contemporary Jesuit life. We owe
it to our own spiritual heritage to try.

Humility before Ignatius

The Greek Philosophical Ideal
In ancient Mediterranean culture, humility was not, in itself, prized as a
human virtue. In the Greek tradition, the key to moral and spiritual excellence
was a reasonable confidence in one's own powers and goodness1 based on
realistic self-knowledge and leading, in the long term, to self-sufficiency,
freedom, and contentment. Balance, as an ideal for human goodness, found
expression in the poets' maxim "Nothing in excess" and in .-<\ristotle's teaching
that human excellence or virtue is always some kind of "moderation," a middle
position between dangerous extremes of ambition or behavior.' The Delphic
motto "Know yourself" seems to have been an invitation not to introspection
as Cicero and Augustine later took it-but to recognition of one1s limits as a
human being, in both a positive and a negative sense; Know your gifts and
powers; but know, too, that you are not a god, know where human intelligence
and resources must meet their end.7 The hybris that led to the downfall of a
Croesus or an Oedipus was not an excess of self-esteem, but a self-confidence
that went beyond the bounds of human knowledge and legitimate enterprise,
leading to a blind and self-destructive independence of the larger cosmic order.
Although the gods themselves were subject to fate, their role as executors of the
ultimate order of things led them at times to act, in the view of poets and

Conwrrations with the Early Church (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), Roberta C.

Bondi points out that the presentation of humility by classic Christian spiritual writers

seems

to many people today both negative and "repulsive." "Across the manv centuries of the

Christian era up to the modern world when women have been exhor;ed to he humble

humility included as one of its components being obedient to their husbands. fathers, brothers

and ?r p :iests. Humility has been a shorthand word for recognizing and accepting an inferior
position in the world . ... The real difficulty is not so much that wornen have been taught to
serve but that service seerns to demand loss of self. The very phrase 'selfless love' raises a
specter of a woman without any needs, de!lites, or even personality of her own" (43f.). For
many, too, she argues, "humility" is associated with "manipulative selfs:acrfice"-the "vou take
the only good. chair" attitude-or with the cultivation of unjmtified feelings of guilr: with
"deliberately raking on ourselves a [ow seJf-esteem" (45). Bondi rightly argues that humility, in

the Christian spiritual tradition, actually "has nothing to do with a low selfitnage" (44) and is
really a necessary part of the road to realism, freedom, and a love mirroring ..the humllity of
God" (see pp. 46-56, 1041.).

"Nothing in excess"

{l'f6iv (ryaP):

see, e.g., Theogni.s 335; Pindar Frag. 216; cf.

Aristotle Rhetoric 1389b4. For 11moderation" {.trpiOrl'f:;) as a norm of virtue, see especially
Aristotle Eth. Nie. 2.6 (1106h8-1107a6); 6.1 (!D8b18), For the history of the notions of
humiJity and magnanimity l am especially indebted to R.A. Gauthier, O.P., Magnanimitrf:
L'ldea! de la grandeur dam la phi1050phie paienne et dam la thCologie chrltienne, Bibliotheque
Thomiste, no. 28 (Paris; Vrin. 1951) and P. Adnes, "Humilit," Dictionnaire de Sp iritualitl 7
(1969), 1136-87.
7 See, e.g., Pindar Nern, 6.1.1-11 (on the difference in power and knowledge between
humans and the gods); Herodotus Hm. 7.10.55. For an introspective rereading of the phrase

see Cicero Tusc1tlan DUputations L22,52; Augustine De Trinitate X.12. Pierre CouraUe has
written a remarkable history of the understanding of this maxim in Greek and Christian
thought: "'Conna1:stoi toi-m &ne de Socrate a saint &rnard1 3 vols.. Etudes augustiniennes
(J>aris, !974-75).
"

s:u..1;J1:,":'.s:

. . . . . . . .,

popular philosophers, in ways reminiscent of the God of Israel, "putting do"'

the proud and exalting the humble."'

For all this sobriety and caution, however, the Greeks respected peopl
who had a realistic appreciation of their own worth. Aristotle's famous descn
tion of the qualities that reveal the virtue of magnanimity (pt-yaXofvxfrx) depic
a natural aristocrat, who "lays claim to great things when he is worthy oj
them."' The f oundation of magnanimity, for Aristotle, is the whole range ol
other virtues, of which it is the "crowning ornament."'w The magnanimo
person knows he is genuinely good, able to perform well in most human
respects, and is willing to make use of his gifts, and accept the rewards they
bring, in a realistic way. Since the greatest reward of all, offered even to the
gods, is honor, the magnanimous person is ready to claim his just share of that
as well; but he does so with moderation, just as he accepts wealth, power, soci
status, even good luck in a moderate way and will not be over-joyful at good
fortune or O>'ersorrowful at bad fortune"" He is, in fact, a man of indifference'
as far as earthly rewards are concerned, single-mindedly pursuing intrinsic'
human excellence, of whose realization he alone is the final judge. Aristotle's
magnanimous person is also courageous when need arises. likes to confer
benefits on others mare than he likes receiving them, stands on his mettle when
dealing with important people but is easy and unpretentious in dealing with
those less important than he, and only bestirs himself to compete for external
prizes that are truly distinguished." He is straightforward in speech, "cares mare
for the Truth than for what people think," avoids gossip and slander, and shows
his independence of need by liking to own beautiful rather than useful things.
Even his body language suggests quality, Aristotle observes with almost comic
precision: he cultivates a dignified, confident bearing, walking slowly and
speaking in a deep voice. 13 Magnanimity is a virtue particularly found in young
people, Aristotle remarks in the Rhetoric: they tend to think themselves worthy
of great things because they are still "full of hope" and "have not yet been
humbled by life." Aging makes us more realistic, perhaps, but also makes us
"small-minded."

"To

Be

More like Christ"

Concrete as Aristotle's portrait is, his main point is to emphasize the

lit" between the magnanimous person's self-esteem and his or her real worth.
To claim great honor when one is worthy of little is to be vain (a vice), to
claim little when one is worthy of great honor is to be small-souled (a worse
vice!). while to deserve little and claim little is simply to be temperate (a virtue
of a different kind).1' Magnanimity itself is a mean between arrogance and
timidity, rooted both in real human excellence and in an accurate and objective
self-awareness.
Later schools of ancient philosophy continued to include magnanimity
among the virtues, but defined it in a variety of ways. The Stoics, for instance,
who did not share Aristotle's confidence in the possibility of finding happiness
and security in the everyday world of the political community, conceived of it
in more internal, moral terms: as a combination of the coura ge to exercise well
whatever control one can over one's affairs, and the patience to undergo well
what must simply be endured.1' But while most ancient moral writers agreed in
their contempt for all forms of vanity and pretension,1' the word "humble" or
Jowly" (Greek: ra'l!'e<Po<;) usually bears a pejorative connotation in pre
Christian authors. For Aristotle, "flatterers are lowly people and lowly people
are flatterers";" "the mark of small-mindedness and lowliness" was to accept
benefits readily from others and then to criticize those who have bestowed
them. 19 To be humble" was simply to lack what modern Americans would call
'class": a sense o f how free, honarable, and self-sufficient people naturally
behave. Although some earlier philosophers composed prayers that expressed
abject dependence on the gods,'0 the Stoic Epictetus saw even the prayer of pe
tition as unworthy of the human ideal, and considered that the only kind of
prayer suitable to human dignity is thanks f or the power to make ourselves
what we want to be. '1 The fruits of Christian Pelagianism were sown in the
Greek philosophical ideal of great-souled self-sufficiency.

"Nie. Eth. 1!23b2-l3.

16
8

See, e.g., Hesiod Works and Days Sff.; Xenophon He/Jenca 6.4,23; Anabam 3.2.10;

Diogenes Lacrtius Vita philosaphorum 1.69.

pmon,

9 Nicomachean
su

(97b15-25).
10

EthicJ 4J (1123blf; for the "V.'hole description of the magnanimous

1123a34-l125a36); see also .demi.an Ethu, 3.5 (1233'1-25); Poste>'ior Analytics 213

rarv

Ano
' nymous, "God grant me the courage to change what can be changed, the patience to
aa:ept what cannot be changed, and the wlsdom to know the difference."
17

Nu. Eth. 1124alf.

"Eth. Nie. 4.l (ll25al).

19 Rhet. 2.6.lC (B84a4).

Ibid. 1124b9-28.

"Ibid. 1124b27-1125a!5.

"Rhet. 2.12.11 (!389a30-32).

See the revealing descriptions of Tbeophrastus Characters 211 23-24; Phllodemus

On Vim l0.15.22i.; Seneca De ira 1.20J, 3; Ep. ad Lucilutm l4.9C.28.

" Ibid. 1124a15f.

12

See Gauthier, 1Magnanimte, 119-64. for references and details. A good contempo

expression of Stoic sentiment would be the familiar maxim, popularized by ,.<\lcoholics

to Zeus.

20

E.g ., Plato Phaedrus 279bc; Xe.nophon .Memorabilia L3 2ff.; Cleanthes Hymn

21

See Epicretus Discourses 1.6,28--32; 1.16.15-21; 2.16.11-15,

The

Old

BRIAN

E. DALEY,

"To Be More like

S.J.

Testament

In the Old Testament, on the other hand, humility came gradually t

be seen as the condition of those for whom Israel's God takes special care an
who are, because of their lack of internal and external resources, particular!
ready to love God in return and keep his law. The word most generally
translated "'humble person," 'ani or 'anaw, originally refers to someone
materially poor and therefore socially insignificant and vulnerable. While Greek
and Roman society generally seem to have regarded poverty, with all its
attendant ills, as something inevitable, the work of fate, Israel believed that it
was either the result of human laziness or guilt (Prov. 6:10f., 10:4) or due to the
aggressive injustice of others (fob 24:1-12). But God rewarded his faithful onesi
with prosperity (for example, Deut. 28:1-14; Ps. 112:1-3, 128:2), and intervened
to defend them from the oppressors who robbed them of what should havei
been theirs (Amos 2:6-16, 8:4-8; Isa. 3:10-15, 10:1-4).
So the "little people who stand in special need of God's protection
tended to be identified, in Israel's view, with the truly virtuous and even the
wise. The prophet Zephaniah, writing during the reign of Josiah towards the!
end of the seventh century before Christ, spoke of "the humble of the earth" as
the ones who obey the Lord's commands, who "do no wrong and tell no lies'
(Zeph. 2:3, 3:12f.). And in post-exilic wisdom literature, it is the poor and
humble who are assured of God's coming justice (Ps. 9-10, 12-18) and who are
often simply equated with the just (Ps. 34, 37:11-20). To be humble in one's
estimate of oneself, not concerned with "lofty things but content to depend on
the Lord, was for some later Jewish writers a central part of recognizing the
power and mystery of God (Ps. 131; Sir. 3:17-24, 10:26-31); like Moses, "the
humblest man on earth" (Num , 12:3, Sir. 45:4), lowly people might know God
as he is.
In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus' mission was seen as the fulfillment of
God's prophetic promise to "bring good news to the poor" (Luke 4:18, citing
Isa. 61:1), the proclamation that God "looks on" the humble with favor and
changes their place with the mighty (Luke 1:48, 51L). Jesus calls the "little ones"
of the earth blessed, because God has chosen to reveal his power especially to
them (1.fatt. 5:3f., 11:25). So Jesus speaks of himself, in a key Synoptic portrait,
as "gentle and humble in heart and therefore able both to reveal God's
Wisdom to other "little ones" and to give them "rest" (Matt. 11:28-30). In Mark
10:35-45 he speaks of his coming passion as a sign of his deliberate renunciation
of power and prestige, and gives powerful expression to this interpretation, in
John's account of the Last Supper, by washing the disciples' feet (John 13:1-16).
Paul. too, in several passages, urges his readers to cultivate a "lowliness of mind"
(m7rH.,,</>poa(wq) based on a realistic awareness of each one's limited place in
the body of Christ and a desire to serve one's brothers and sisters (Rom. 12:3-8,
16; Phil. 2:1-3; see also Col. 3:12, Eph. 4:2). The model of this active, communi-

Christ"

who though he was in the form of God, did

n humilitv is "Christ Jesus,
tatia
, taking
equlity with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself
aotCount
d'm
f
oun
b'
servant, being born in the likeness of men. And emg
the form of a
death
even
humbled himself and became obediet unto d,eath,
human form, he
humble
2:6-8). It 1s only through a s1m1lar readiness to
(Phil.
on a cross"
,
.
, auth nty
to
even
and
m the commuruty
y to those 1n
?
oneself, to submit lovingl
Pet.
(1
glory
to
disciple of Jesus can himself hope to come
one's equals, that the
5:21-6:9, Mark 10:43-45).
Eph.
5:5f., Phil. 2:3f.,
Early

Christian Writers

ce to the
The value of humility as a willing dependence on and obedien
ied in the "way" that led to
saving, mysterious God, taught by Jesus and embod
.
ed in the Scriptures that early
bis death on the cross, was so deeply ingrain
the heart of the Church's
Christian writers could not help but see it as close to
some rethinking for those
spirituality. Identifying it as a virtue, however, .took
Clement and Ortgen of
steeped in the culture of the ancient Greek c1ty. So
to integrate the Gospel
Alexandria for instance, with their habitual tendency
sm, tried to identify
with the b st moral and philosophical traditions of Helleni
"unstuffiness" (imx/Jio:) or
the humility modeled by Jesus with the Stoic ideal of
pt for success and his
Aristotle's norm of moderation." In his grand contem
Jesus uifies both
courageous endurance of suffering, the early Alexandrian
virtues for his disciples
humility and magnanimity in a way that redefines both
and makes them practically the same thing."
becon;e more
By the late fourth century, Christ ian writers .had
humility as a
of
tanding
conscious of the distinctiveness of the Christian unders
and ther
stom,
Chryso
means of following Christ. For Basil, Augustine, John.
deslfe to
e
pervers
the
sm,
classical Fathers, pride is the root and archetype of all
only
leads
and
,
creator
make ourselves masters of the world in place of God our
istian
Ch
the
to
ing
cs.24 Accord

to the destruction of our identity as creatur

cosmic scale, !S the
story, the one remedy for the disease of pride, on the
.
be one w1th us and to
humilitv of a God who has "come down" out of love to

draw u;, in humility, to himself.

at: Mary ls "praised by

So Origen Hom. in Luc. 8.4f., cornrnenting on the Magnifir
also Clement Strom.
See
virtue!
k
dass
of
all generations" ultimately because she is an example
6.15.
Cels.
2.22.132[; 4.5.19: Origen Ctr,
3.16; 4.6; Origen In Gen. Hom. 8; Ctr. Cels..
n See Clement Paed. 3.6; Srrom. 3.7;
See Gauthier, Magn.mimit1, 225-33; Adni!s,
12.
Hom,
Lev.
In
55;
7.53,
6.75;
L29; 2,24; 4.46;
11

"'Humilite," 1153f.

14.13.1; Tract. 25 in Joan. 15.;

See, e.g. Basil Hom 20.1; Augusti.ne De Civ. Dei
John Chry>ostom In Joan. 9.2.
2-t.

10

BRIAN

E. DALEY, S.J.

"To Be More like Christ"

At the end of the seventh book of the Confessions, Augustine

acknowledges to his God that, by the time of his arrival in Milan in 386,
although he had solved most of the intellectual difficulties that kept him from
being a Christian, after carefully studying Neoplatonist philosophy, he was still
too weak.. to enjoy God.
For I was talking on and on as if I "\Vere an expert yet unless I were to seek
out your way in Christ1 our savior, I would not be an expert but a fool on the
way to perdition. 25 For now I had begun to want to appear "'ise;. I was full of
the effects of my own sin, yet I did not weep for it hut rather was bloated by

my own knowledge.it.- Where, after all, was that love that builds on the

foundation of humility, which is Christ Jesus?27

Christian love, that central manifestation of redemption which is the Holy

Spirit poured forth in our hearts, can only be realized in the humble; so the
Church, which for Augustine is the embodiment of love, is brought into
existence by the humble concreteness of water, bread, and wine, and realized in
the mutual ministrations of humble, ordinary people." Divine humility, in f act,
is, in Augustine's view, the heart of the "way" of Christ: the supreme paradox
that acknowledges both the gulf and the union between creation and God and
separates the order of nature even, at its best, from the order of grace. So he
offers this explanation in one of his later homilies on John:
How is it that wickedness is so abundant? Through pride.Heal pride and there

will be no wickedness. That the cause of all our illness-our pride-might be

healed, the Son of God came down and was made humble. Why, my fellow
human, are you proud? God was made humble for your sake. You might,
perhaps, be ashamed to imitate a humble human being, but imitate at least a
humble God! . , . He who is God has been made human; you, who are human,
recognize that you are human: all your humility means is that you should

know yourself. So it is because God Is teaching us humility that he says, "I did
not come to do my own will, but the will of the one who sent me" Uohn
6:38]. For this is his way of recommending humility; pride, in fact, does its
own will, humility does the will of God."

For the Fathers of the fifth century, then, humility had been
transformed by the incarnation of God from being simply a negative human
characteristic, or a sign of weakness in which God might be able to show his
25 The

pun is difficult to capture in English: "Non perirus sed periturus

26

Another pun; "'Non flebam, insuper et inflabar scientia."

27

Conf 7.20.26.

essem."

11

wer to being the heart of a new disciplina, a specifically Christian method of

observance. So Leo the Great insists, in a sermon preached on
Epi phany in 452, that

:digio;,.

the Savior's entire victory over the devil and the world began in humility and
was brought to its completion in humility.... Therefore, dear friends, the
whole method of attaining Christian wisdom consists not in abundance of
speech, not in sharpness of argument, not in a hunger for praise and glory, but
in true and voluntary humility, which the Lord Jesus Christ chose and taught,

with all imaginable courage, from the womb of his mother to the pains of the

cross.ro

Half a century earlier, John Chrysostom had presented this new Christian
wisdom of voluntary self-emptying in still more dramatic terms, as freely chosen
union with the humiliated and suffering Christ. In his eighth homily on
Ephesians, he reflects passionately on the figure of Paul, "a prisoner in the Lord":
Nothing else is glorious, but chains for the sake of Christ, and bonds tied up
with those holy hands. More than being an apostle, more than being a teacheri
more than being an evangelist, this is glorious: to be a prisoner for Christ....

Even if the situation had no reward of its own> this alone is a great reward1 this
is sufficient recompense; to suffer these terrible things for the sake of my
Beloved .. . If anyone were to offer me a choice of all heaven and these chains,
.

I would choose the chains;

if he offered ro place me either on high with the

angels or with Paul in chains, I would choose prison.... And rightly-for

nothing is more blessed than those bonds, ...nothing is better than to suffer
ills for Christ.31

Humility here has been transformed into a desire for union with Christ in his
passion, and has become part of a new mysticism of the cross.

Religious Life in Its Beginnings

Against this background, it is understandable that from the start
humility was considered a central and necessary virtue of the religious lif e. For
Abba Poimen of the Egyptian desert, at the start of the fifth century, "humility
and fear of God are like the breath that comes out of the nose";" for Dorotheus
of Gaza, a spiritual master writing almost a century later, humility was the most
fundamental of all the virtues, simply because "neither the f ear of God itself,
nor generosity to the poor, nor f aith, nor self-control, nor any other of the

48 The story of the baptism of the philosopher Victorious, with which Augustine

begins book 8 of the Confessions, seems intended to illustrate this point.

19

Tf'aCtatuJ 25 in Johannis Evangelium 16 {written after 418).Augusrine's theme here

appears in many of his writings. a. the lapidary phrase of De cathizandis rudibus 8: "A

proud humanity is a great misery, but an even greater mercy is a humble God."

30

Sermon 37.2f.

"Hom. 8 in Eph. (on Eph. U): PG 62.SSff.

:;z &ryings of the Desert fathers., Poimen 491 trans. Benedicta War SLG {Cistetcian
Press: Kalamazoo. 1975), 173.

12

BRIAN E. DALEY,

"To Be More like Christ"

S.J.

virtues can be brought to full realization apart from humility, "31 If m<Jn,LsttC!Sll)
was, at root, simply a structured way of living out Christian discipleship
community with total commitment, it soon came to be conceived, as one
dern scholar has put it, as an objective state of humility, which fo rmed
most suitable framework for becoming truly humble of heart.H
So John Cassian, the first great propagator of the Egyptian monastid
ideal in the fifth-century Latin West, speaks of humility as a kind of extended'
middle stage of spiritual growth, by which a person's fear of the Lord, which
has motivated his first conversion and brought him to embrace the monastic
life, is gradually transformed into the "love, which has no fear; and in which
he keeps the commandments velut ruturaliter, out of love for the good." In a
fictive homily delivered by the experienced Egyptian ascetic, Abba Pinufius, to a
young beginner, Cassian lists ten "signs" (indicia) by which this monastic
humility can be recognized as it grows: mortifying one's desires; manifesting all
one's thoughts to the elders of the community; relying completely on their
judgment; observing the gentleness of obedience and the constancy of pati
ence"; refraining both from injuring others and from complaining about how
they injure us; doing nothing not urged by the rule or the elders; being content
.
with the worst things in the community and considering oneself unworthy even
of them; truly believing oneself the inferior of all in the community; restraining
one's voice and tongue; not being "ready or eager to laugh."" All of these, in
Cassian's context, are seen as corporate virtues: expressions of an intense desire
to b e integrated into a community of disciples and to be wholly absorbed into
its commitment to the way of Christ, as a means of purging one's ingrained
vices and growing towards purity of heart. Yet humility is their common
denominator, in Cassian's mind, and their underlying cause-a humility that is
both the presupposition and the long-term effeet of single-minded communitv
living.

'

Llke much in his writings on the monastic life, this passage of Cassian's
Institutes left a deep mark on later traditions of Western religious life, In the
sixth century both the anonymous Rule of the Master and the better-known Rule
of St. Benedict, which seems to incorporate large portions of the Rule of the
Master Into its O'\ltn text, took Cassian's ten "signs" of monastic humility and

15
3G

Innitu.tiones 4,39.3.

lb.id, 4J9,2. Laughter was generally regarded by ancient Mediterranean people,

both pagan and Christian, as a sign of coarseness and indiscipline, usually indulged in at
someone else's expense. Virtuous {or well-bred) people simply smiled cheerfully!

13

rebu ilt them into the ten central steps of a twelve-step "ladder" by which we can
attain speedily that exaltation in heaven to which we climb by the humility of
this present life.'"' The first step, for the "Master" and St. Benedict, is "that a
pezson keep the fear of God always bef ore his eyes and never forget it."18 This
in volves remembering the commandments and our last end, guarding against our
vices, being conscious that God always sees us and kno"'"' our thoughts, and
seeking God's will rather than our own desires. Beginning here and climbing
thro ugh Cassian's ten "signs" as progressive stages of growth, the monk in these
rwo sixth-century rules arrives linally at the complete integration of humility
into every aspect of his life: "that a monk always manifests humility in his
bearing no less than in his heart, so that it is evident at the Work of God
[singing the office, that is], in the oratory, the monastery, or the garden, on a
journe y or in the field, or anywhere else."" This final stage of humility still
includes a measure of fear, since the monk remains aware of his sinfulness and
of the prospect of judgment, yet now growth in humility has begun to trans
form fear into love, so that "all that he once performed with dread he will now

begin to observe without effort, as though naturally, from habit, no longer out
of fear of hell, but out of love for Christ, good habit, and delight in virtue."'"
For both of these sixth-century monastic rules, humility is no longer simply an
effect of living in a religious community but has itself become a way of life, a
central structural principle of Christian discipleship, a stairway to heaven."

Medieval Spirituality
These early treatments of humility remained enormously influential on
the development of various forms of Christian discipleship in the Western
Church. Equally influential on later medieval spirituality was the discussion of
humility by St. Bernard of Clairvaux in several of his writings. Following
Abelard's identification of the classical virtue of magnanimity as a subspecies of
fortitude, which makes a person ready to undertake the most difficult projects
"Regula Magistri [- RM] 10.S; Regula Benedicu [ - RB] 7.5, trans. and ed. Timothy
1981), 193, The picturesque paradox of "climbing"
b "steps of humility" to the "peak of lowliness," in which we draw close to heaven during
this present earthly life, is perhaps more striking in the Latin than in English translation.
Fry, O.S.B. {Collegeville: Liturgical Press,

38 RM 10.10; RB

:n lnstructic>ns 2.26! Dorot.hee de Gaza: Ocuvrf?1 spiritueller, Sources chlltiennes, no. 92

{Paris: Cerf, 1963), 1B6ff. See aiso the somewhat freer translation of Eric Wheeler, Dorotheos of
Ga?.a: Discourses and Sayings (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Press, 1977), 44f.
34 Adalbert de VogUC, La regle de Stiint Benoit: Commentary 1, Sources chrCtiennes,
no. 184, p. 345,

7.10. (Fry 193).

"RM 10.821; RB 7.62L (Fry 201).
., RM 10.881; RB 7.681. (Fry 201).
41 So De Vogiie remarks in his RCgle (370):
"Heirs of Cassian, but losing sight of his
Journey from fear to Jove. the two authors agree in emphasizing humility to an extraordinary
degree, making it the path to eternal joy, the unjvetsal attitude to be adopted before God as

before mankind, the totality [somme] of Christian spirituality

Carried to its ultimate
consequences, the Gospel doctrine of exaltation by humility terminates .in the exaltation of
humility... EDITOR'S TRANSLATION.

14

"To Be More like Christ"

BRIAN E. DALEY, S.J.

for a reasonable motive,42 Bernard himself recognized our need for

ma Wl:'nimitas fidei, by which we take seriously the "capacity for eternal things
that IS our real natural greatness, and boldly reach out-relying all the while on
Christ-to "assault1' the Kingdom of :fieaven.43 Yet humility, in his view, is
more than simply another virtue aiding us on our way to God: it is the starting.
point of the JOurney, the first step in a movement of deepening knowledge and
love of ourselves, our neighbor, and God that ends in the contemplative union
.
.
of beatitude. It 1s both the origin and the overarching theme of Christian
growth.

Bernard delights in schematic arrangements, and his lists of the steps

b
.
.
which humility grows tnto the love or God are not always identical.
In som
texts he distinguishes between the more fundamental humility of realistic self.
knowledge, by which we recognize that we are sinful creatures-made in
God's'
image, but weakened by sin-and a deeper humility of the will and the
affec.
tions, by which we freely accept this knowledge of ourselves and
let it
determine the way w? treat others and God." The first kind of humility
here,
.
although a presuppos11ton for the effectiveness of grace, is simply the
natural
work of human reason; but the second, involving a transformation of
the will
by love, is part of the grace that makes us righteous. So in another a
f mous
passage, Bernard speaks of "three degrees of justice" or righteousness, which
are
m f act three progressive levels of this deeper
humility of affect and will: "strict
justice" (that is, rendering each his due), which is not to prefer yourself
to your
equals and not to compare yourself with your superiors; "higher justice," which
s not to compare yourself with your equals and not to prefer yourself to your
rnfenors; and "the highest justice," which is to show by action that
you
conside yourself inferior even to your inferiors.45 The point here-exp
ressed in
paradoxical terms characteristic of feudal society's preoccupation with
shame
and honor-seems to be that the God-given righteousness of grace
consists
in
.
moving
from the minimal iustice of respecting human relationships and
re
.
.
spons1bil
mes as they obje<:tlve
ly are, through a gradual loss of interest in our
own legitimate status and recompense, to a voluntary attitude of
love and

15

se rvice towards all people. For Bernard, justice, is made perfect in Christlike
6
serv ice.4
By the time of Bernard, Christian writers had so come to emphasize
the importance of humility in Christian growth to perfection that magnanimity,
its classical counterweight, had come to be conceived in derivative, and similarly
ascetical, terms: the greatness of soul to undertake the labor of self-conquest,
undaunted by its difficulty." St. Bonaventure, lecturing on the biblical account
of creation in the spring of 1273, went so far as to identify magnanimity as a
subspecies of humility: the ability to recognize what is truly great (God) and
what is truly small (the world and its honors) and to focus one's efforts and
energies wholly on serving God.48

St. Thomas Aquinas made a more serious attempt to integrate

Aristotle's portrayal of magnanimity-available since the 1240s in Robert
Grosseteste's new and accurate Latin translation of the Nicomachean Ethics-into
his own systematic treatment of the virtues, as a parallel to, rather than a
derivative of, Christian humility. In the Summa Theologia: Thomas seems to
assume, like Origen and Clement of Alexandria, that the ancient philosophers
really had regarded humility as a virtue, if in other terms; he begins his own
positive treatment of it by suggesting, as Albert the Great had done, that
humility and magnanimity work together in the virtuous person to moderate
and channel the natural human passion of hope: humility tempering it to keep
it from becoming arrogant presumption magnanimity spurring it on to prevent
it from fading into despair." Such a scheme had the advantage of bringing both
the Christian and the Aristotelian virtues into the realm of philosophical spec
ulation about human perfection; but it departed from Thomas's normal
principle that our passions each need only one virtue to moderate between their
46

In hls treatise On the Steps of Humility, in which he expands on the Rule of

Benedict's now classic twelve steps for the benefit of his Clstercian brethren, Bernard develops
a parallel scheme in terms of three "steps of truth/' which conceive of humility, service, and

love in more cognitive terrrn. The first "step of truth" is to know ourselves

as

we really are.

This is, he suggests, the result of climbing the Benedictine "ladder" of humility, and i s both
the cure for pride and the experiential basis for compassion towards others (De gradibus

humilir.atis 4.13.). The second step of truth is to know our neighbor, recognizing-"not

178.1657.

42 See Abelard Dialogue of a Pbil"'pher, a Jew and a Christian [1141-42} PL

See Senno in Dominicam infra octavam Assumptionis BMV (PL 183.-433-437

) on
the spiritual "magnanimity" and courage of Mary; Sermo in Canticum
43

Ctnticorum sC' (PL

183.1167); Sermon 43 (PL 183.665D). See also Gauthier, Magnanimitl> 28Jff,
H E.g., Sermo 1 de Lnulibur S. Maria! 5; Sermo
42 in Cantica 6; Sermo 4 de Adventu 4.
On this distinction between a "cognitive" and a "conative'" humility
in Bernard, see G. B,
Burch, trans., Saint BemaTd. The Step1 of Humility (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard, 1942), 5C-55.
'5 Sermo

in Octa'V.am Epiphania 4 (PL 183.154).

angrily or insolently, but men:ifully and sympathetically"-that he or she shares our weak
nesses and has the same needs that we do, so that we "flee from justice to mercy" (ibid. 5.16-

18). The third step is to know the truth itsdf, which is God, in a loving contemplation
purified by humility and compassion (ibid. 6.19).
41 See, for instance, William of Auvergne De virtutibus 11 and 17 (Opera omnia
l.155ff., 176). Gauthier, }./agnanimiti, 234-41.
411 Collariones in Hextemeron 6.10. See also the anonymous Franciscan tract Compen
d:ium de vi'rtute humilir.ati5, among the works of St. Bonaventure (ed. Quaracchi 8, proleg. 3.5,
p . cii).
..

49

Summa theologia Ila Ure., q. 161, a.1.

16

BRIAN E. DALEY, S.J.

"To Be More like Christ"

possible extremes; and, what is more important1 it neglected the distinctive1}

Christian character of humility, as it had been understood since the earl)
Church. So in the next article of the same question in the Summa, Thoma,
seems to alter course as he suggests that both magnanimity and humility are
concerned, in themselves, to find the mean between presumption and despair:
magnanimity with reference to our hope for human greatness, humility with
reference to our hope f or union with C'>0d." In making this further refinement,
Thomas takes greater cognizance of the real difference between ethical and
ascetical discourse and shows a deeper awareness than the early Alexandrians
had of the grounding of humility in religious faith. Here and elsewhere in his
discussion of humility, Thomas seems to have seen it above all as the
submission of the person to God, in full awareness of his status as a creature; a
submission that allows us to realize, even as we recognize the genuine greatness
of our human endowments, that they are all gifts of the creating God."
Aside from Thomas and the strict Aristotelians of Paris who flourished
briefly after his death, most medieval theologians and spiritual writers continued
to take a more dramatic and Christ-centered view of the importance of humility
as the heart of Christian discipleship. For Francis of Assisi, "holy humility'
stood alongside her "sister, holy lady poverty,' as the two basic characteristics
of the friars' way of following Jesus." The medieval Glossa ordinaria on the
Bible, which served for centuries as the main scholastic handbook of biblical
commentary, explained Jesus' decision to submit to John, bis inferior, in
baptism and so to "fulfil all justice (Matt . 3:15) by referring to Bernard's
distinction of "three degrees of justice" as three degrees of "perlect humility,
quae est omni> iustitia."" Ludolph of Saxony (d. 1370), the Carthusian whose
best-selling Life of Christ played a major role in Ignatius's conversion almost two
centuries later, took over from the Glossa this interpretation of Jesus' baptism,
adding that the truly humble person "does not seek for honors, to attribute
them to himself, but refers them to God, and retains f o r himself only a lowly
station [vilitatemJ. . . He regards himself as the least of all, choosing and wish
ing always the last place."" By the late Middle Ages, it was becoming a
convention for spiritual writers to interpret the whole ministry of Jesus m

" Ibid.q.2, obj. 3 and ad 3.

" See ibid. q.129, a. 3, ad 4; q. 161, q. I, ad 5; q. 2 ad 3: q. 3, ob j I and corpus; q. 4

obj. 1; q. 162, a. 5; q. 170, a. 2, obj. 2.For an evaluation of Thomas's treatment of magnanim
ity and hu1nility, see especially Gauthier, Magnanimit 318-71, 444-65.
5-l

Francis of Assisi Salutatfrm of the Virtues; Second Rule 6.2.

S.J Bibli.a sacra cum Glorsa ordinaria 5 (LyonS;

1589) 77C; see also tbe somewhat
earlier, iess detailed medievat biblical textbook, Peter Comestor's
Hi.stt>ria scholastica, In E'vang.
33 (PL 198.1555 Bl0-14).

Ludolph of Saxony Vita lesu Cbristi I, 21.7, ed. L.M. Rigol1ot (Paris
and Ro me:
Palme, 1870) 1.215.
5

17

ierms 0f voluntary humiliation and to see the choice. of a self-emptying, socially

- lesh.1p.
onate pattern of life a'i the quintessence of d isc1p
compassi
The revival of an intensely affective, Christ-centered sp1r1tual"
ity for Iay
.
the
Low
Countries
in
the
late
fourteenth
and
early
fifteenth
centunes,
peopIe m
.
usually called the devotio moderna, also laid great stress on hum11tty, as the
It both of a realistic knowledge of oneself as a creature of God and . a
resu
l , affective knowledge of Christ. The most influential product of thtS
persona
attn'buted to the
niovement Was undoubtedly the Imitation of Christ, generallv
. .,
'
. h c1earI y aI so
earl'v-fifteenth-cemu
, Dutch Augustinian Thomas a Kempis, whic
,,- There
left its mark on Ignatius, along with countless o;hers of h"is time.
.
discipleship-confo rming our lives to the pattern laid do"".n by Chr1st-ts pre
sented in terms of humility, a good life, mner compunct10n, and the love of
God." In contrast to the knowledge of scholars, which tends toward pnde and
self-deception' the Imitation argues, humility grows from a recognition, m the
ts:
you ':ant to Iearn
light of God-given truth, of what our nature real ly """If
.
something that will really help you," the author wntes, "aim at berng unknwn
and thought of no account. The highest and
t profitabl for:" of study 1s to
understand one's inmost nature and despise .1t. . Yet hum1hty, n the lttatton,
too, is not simply a negative estimate of oneself: it grows from t e exper1e:ice of
grace, of being loved by God in Christ, precisely as a creature with o claim on
that love from one's own merits . So the author reflects before God, 1n a passage
rich with echoes of Augustine's Confessions:

,'

If I condemn myself, utterly abase myself, abandon all self-esteen:, trea myJf
as the dus t that I am1 then your grace will favor me, and your light will she
on my heart. Then all self--estirnation1 however slight, will be s"Wallowed up lll.
the abyss of my nothingness and v.-111 perish for ever.... If I am left to myself,

all is nothingness and weakness; but if you suddenly look my way, at once I
H See Ignatius's own remark in the 1'.femoria/e of Gonalves da C:1rnara {97) that
after he discovered the Imitation at Manresa, he did not want to read any other devo
tional b ook.

56 See Imitation of Christ Ll; d. 1.3: "l\ really great man has great love. A really
great man is humble in his own eyes, and considers all distinction id honor wo thless. A

a:
_ er edit. A a
really wise man treats all earthly things as refuse in order to have Christ to his
.

who has reallv learnt something ls one who does rhe will of God and abandons his own will
(trans. Betty I. Knott [London' Collins 1963], 42).
.
57 Ibid. 1.3, Much of the evangelical activity of the early leaders of the dewtto

m.oderna seems to have

been directed to university srudents, with the aim of attracting them

simple life of Christian community; hence the continual contrast in th e

the pride of l earning and the humility required for discipleship.
a

58

Jbid. 1.2; cf. Thomas a Kempi$ Sermons

to Novice$ of the

Imitatum

to

between

Canons Regular 17. The

phrase "'Aim at being unknown and thought of no account" was apparently an o t quoted

maxim <1mong the Brethren of the Common Life, :he lay confraternity who exercised great
.
influence on Thomas a Kempis and others at the beg1nn1ng
of the fiftttnth century.

18

BRIAN E. DALEY,

S.J.

"To Be More

am made strong, I am filled with new joy. , , . For by sinfully loving myself, I
lost myself, but by seeking you alone and loving you wholeheartedly I have
found both myself and you, and by that love have been utterly humbled again.
. . . Turn us back to you rself, so that we may be thankful, humble and loving;
for you are our salvarion. our boldness and our strength.59

For the writers of the dewtio modema, the embodiment of this

humility, which is both the highest human self-knowledge and the work of pure
grace, is the person of Jesus, whose whole life, from the moment of the Word's
incarnation in the womb of the humble Mary to the moment of his death in
utter poverty on the cross, reveals the paradoxical love of a God who empties
himself into the world for its salvation." Humility, f or the Christian-even
accepting the contempt and hostility of others-becomes easy when one thinks
of the passion of Christ; and humility makes one his disciple. "If you are
humble and peaceable, Jesus will be with you.""
One final example of this late-medieval stress on humility as central to
the practical following of Christ is the Treatise on Humility by Girolamo
Savonarola, the reforming Dominican preacher of Florence who was burned at
the stake i n 1498 fo r his critical stance towards Church authorities. Written for
a group of contemplative nuns in 1492-the year, presumably, of Ignatius's
birth-this simple and powerful little tract begins by defining humility in dear
cut Thomistic terms and offers ten simple, concrete practices to help a person
grow in the virtue: Reflect on one's experience of depending on God f or every
virtue, exercise oneself in self-knowledge, contemplate the greatness of God,
meditate on the Incarnation and the Passion of Jesus, and so on.62 Savonarola
then discusses the successive grades of humility, by which one approaches

like Christ"

19

holiness and perfection. Although he does not distinguish these grades from one
another with all the clarity one might wish for, he seems to have five in mind,
the first three of which are dearly dependent on Bernard's three "degrees of
jU!'ti ce (see above, p. 16). The fast kind of humility, which is necessary for
_
salvation, Savonarola suggests, 1s to submit ourselves obediently to the
commandments of God and to our legitimate superiors, thus avoiding mortal
sin.63 The second, which is more meritorious, is to move beyond the obligation
of the commandments and to observe the "'counsels'> as well; at the same time, a
person begins to humble himself not only before superiors but even before
one's equals, to reflect deeply on his or her own defects and on God's great
gifts1 and to make new, concrete efforts to practice the other virtues towards his
neighbor.64 The third degree of humility is to humble oneself even bef ore one's
social inferiors and to express this attitude in concrete acts of charity towards
them-nurSing a sick servant, for example, or occasionally even sharing the ser
vants' work." A fourth degree, more perfect still, is a humility so completely
interiorized and so free of self-congratulation that it leads a person to reject any
recognition by others of his or her own holiness or humility, and to be utterly
amazed-as Mary was-at any sign of favor or recognition by God." This is
indeed perfect humility, in human terms. "Nevertheless," writes Savonarola,
it see ms to me that the most perfect grade of humility comes after a person has
acquired all those mentioned above, performs excellent works for the love of
God and the welfare of his neighbors, and lon gs for lowly things: it is to be

persecuted, calumniated, abused by wicked persons, or to have no esteem at all

shown to oneself. Such humility our Savior demonstrated to the world, when,

after doing the most excellent works, he embraced the lov,.liest things of a.11the hatred of the Jews and the indignity of the cross. But this grade is found in
few places, and very seldom.61

" Ibid. l.8 (trans. Knott, 123f.).

60

See Thom-as a Kempis Prl>fJers and Medit4ti'ons on the Life of Chriu L4: "f praise
and magnify you [Christ] for voluntarily emptying yourself of your fulness, and for graciously
taking upon yourself our weak and degraded nature, capable of suffering and of death; that so
you might fill us by emptying yourself, might save us by your sufferings. might raise us by
your lowliness, might strengthen us by your weakness, and by your death might bring us to a
glorious i.mmortality" (trans. 'Yl. Duthoit [London: Kegan Paul, Trench. Tri.ibner, 1908), 13
[ modern.izedD.
61 Imitation of Christ 2.8 (trans. Knon, 94); cf. ibid. 2.1: "If you resort wtrh devotion
to the wounds. and precious scars of Jesus, you will find great comfort in trouble. You will
not mind so much if people despise you, and you will find it easy to hear when they speak
against you. , .. If you had once entered completely into the heart of Jesus and had tasted just
a little of his burning love, then you would care nothing about your own convenience or
inconvenience. Instead you would rejoice when insult was offered you-for the love of Jesus
makes a person unmindful of himself' (trans. Knott, 84f.).
62

Trattato

dell'umilr i.n C. Belli, ed,, Sa/tJ()natola.: La

scure alle tad-ici: T.,,attati ascetici

{Padua: Mesaggero, 1983), 126-33. As far as I know. this treatise has not been translated into
English.

Savonarola then concludes his treatise by summing up Benedict's twelve steps,

which he interprets-in the light of Cassian-as "signs of heartfelt humility
rather than degrees."" But the heart of this humility, in his view, is clearly not
simply the perfection of monastic virtue but an assimilation to the self-emptying
love of Christ.
By the eve of the Reformation, then, and the beginning of the life of
Ignatius, humility had acquired a profile of its own, as one of the distinctive

"' Ibid.. 133.

.. Ibid., 133-35.
"

Ibid., ll5f.

fh

Ibid., 137f. He is referring, of course, to Mary's puzzled reaction to the angel's

greeting. "Hail, full of grace! The Lord is with-you! in Luke 1:29,
67

68

Ibid., 139.
Ibid.. 139!.

20

BRIAN

E.

"Ta Be More like Christ"

DALEY, S.J.

characteristics of the Christian disciple's mind and heart. Looking back over the
development we have so briefly sketched here, we might sum up its main
features in a few broad strokes:

1. Christian thinkers were aware, in varying degrees, of the tension that

existed between the Greco-Roman ideal of human autonomy, with its esteem
for a noble awareness of one's own greatness, and the Gospels' invitation to
join Jesus in "taking the form of a servant"; some, like Origen and Thomas
Aquinas; sought to find continuities and resonances between the two, while
others emphasized the newness of the Christian way (Augustine, Bonaventure).
2. A s various f orms of religious life were developed to provide scope for an
ever deeper commitment to discipleship by those who felt themselves called
beyond "ordinary" Christian observance, Christlike humility came to be seen as
one of its central values and principal fruits (Cassian, Benedict, Francis). The
monastic community existed, in the eyes of many, as a school of humility.
3. For Christian writers
seen to be self-knowledge:
unfaithful creatures before a
its utter gratuity (Augustine,

as for the ancient Greeks, the core of humility was

for Christians, the recognition of our status as
loving and just God and the acceptance of grace in
Bernard, Aquinas, Thomas Kempis, Savonarola).

Humility before God is a relational virtue. It begins in accepting the ob

ligations of creaturehood-in simply keeping God's commandments because we
recognize him to be our God; bur if allowed to grow, it moves beyond
commandments to a deeper commitment and a more earnest quest for God,
beyond creaturely obligation to the freedom of self-consuming love (Bernard,
Savonarola).

21

Humility in the Spiritual Exercises

his brief survey of the Christian understanding of humility as it grew in

the centuries before Ignatius can provide us with at least a broad
context in which to understand the place of humility in the Spiritual
Exercises-particularly the consideration on Three Kinds of Humility that
Ignatius offers, just before describing the process of election in the Second
Week. What we have said thus far is not an attempt to identify any sources on
which this text in the Exercises may be based, although the parallelism in
thought between Ignarius's "three kinds" and the five "steps of humility"
outlined by Savonarola is particularly striking." Bur a sense of the earlier
Christian spiritual tradition may help us to grasp some of the reasons why
humility, poverty, and "insults and contempt" are so closely identified with the
"way" of Christ in the Second Week of the Exercises, and may also suggest
something of the range of spiritual connotations humility must have had for
Ignatius and his contemporaries in their search for that \Vay, et .us tur n ow to
.
remind ourselves-again, in broad strokes-of the place of th!S idea w1rh1n the
familiar structure and process of the Exercises themselves.

4.

5. Humility is also seen in the ascetical tradition to have direct implications

for our relations with our neighbors, whether they are peers or less than peers;
it leads to compassion, charity, and the v.orks of mercy-to ministerial en
gagement (Bernard, Savonarola).
Humility is essentially discipleship, following and paniciparing in the
"way of Jesus (Chrysosrom, Augustine, Leo, Thomas a Kempis, Savonarola). Its
final justification as a religious virtue comes from the distinctive view of God's
saving activity in the world that is revealed in the teaching, the style, and
ultimately the death of Jesus. Apart from Jesus, it remains as unintelligible f or
Christians as it was for the Greeks. Apart from humility and from the kind of
love humility brings to expression, Jesus remains unintelligible as well.
6.

69

For the suggestion of a direct conneciion, see Henri Watrigant, La gbtse des

Exercices de saint lgnace de Lr.ryola (Amiens, 1897), 124, Tt is at least possible that Ignatius came
to know Savonarola's tteati:re on humility during the formative period of the text of the

Exerci$e$, bct\\reen the mid 1520s and the completion of the first Latin verslon in 1341. Some
of the friar's works, in Spanish translation, seem to have been published as early as 1511 at the

behest of Cardinal Cisneros and were dedicated to Doiia Guiomar, duchess of N.ljera, the wife
of Ignatlus'5 first patron. A Latin collection, including the tract on humiHcy, was published in

1529 at Alcala by another friend and patron of Ignatius, Miguel de Eguia, who had also
published Spanish translations of Erasrnus's Em:hiridion and the Imitation of Christ in 1526. A

Spanish translation of Savonarola's tract was certainly available before 1534. See M. Bataillon,
"Sur la diffusion des oeuvres de Savonaroie en Espagne et en Portugal, 1500-1560," in A1lmges

de philo/ogie; d'histoire et de littbatu.re ojferr.s a Joseph Vianey (Paris: Les presses frani;aises, 1934),

94f., 96ff. Like Erasmus, whose influence on the First Principle and Foundation of the

Exercises has also been suggested (see J. Calveras and C. de Dalmases., eds., Sancti Ignatii de
Layo/a Exetcit"1. SpiriU14lw, Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesu, vol. 100 [Rome, 1969): 56fi.),
Savonarola enjoyed a very positive reputation in Spain during the first few decades of the
sixt eenth century, but came to be considered dangerous in the 1530s because of his emphsis
on internal sanctity and his critical antipapal positions; his works were placed on the Spanish

index in 1559 (Bataillon, "Sur la diffusion," 101ff.). Significantly. perhaps, Polanco recounts
that a copy of Savonarola's works 'l\>'as found in the Society's house in Rme in 1553 and
burned at lgnatius's orders, "because his spirit, rebellious towards the Aposrohc See, seemed to
him not deserving of approv<lil. even though he S<tid many good things" (Chronicon 3.24).
Hereafter the Monumenta Historica series will be abbreviated as MHSl.

22

"To Be More like Christ"

BRIAN E. DALEY, S.J.

In the Structure and Process of the Exercises

If the First Week of the Exercises is essentially a process of prayerful
self-examination leading to conversion and the identification of oneself as a
loved sinner, the Second and subsequent Weeks are more a process of
contemplating the story of Christ, the mystery of his person and his passage
through human life to death and to life again, in order to frame the retreatant's
choice of the best possible way to follow him and be identified with him. The
goal of the whole movement is suggested by the Contemplation fo r Obtaining
the Love of God, made (perhaps several times) during the Fourth Week, in
which a recognition of God's gifts in all their sacred history is meant to lead the
retreatant to give himself or herself concretely and totally to God in return, in a
mutual exchange of love which at that stage can only be expressed in terms of
indwelling, participation and mystical union (234-37).
The Second Week, which introduces the retreatant to the actual saving
movement or "way" of Christ, with the purpose of drawing him or her by free
commitment into that way, focuses thematically from the start on what any
sixteenth-century reader familiar with the spiritual tradition would immediately
have identified as Christian humility. The meditation on the Kingdom of Christ
(91-99), which Ignatius apparently proposes for the retreatant's prayer on the
day between the First and the Second Weeks, sets the scene in broad and
dramatic strokes for the whole sequence to follow. The plan of God to save the
world through the "way" of Christ is put in terms calculated to appeal, perhaps,
to the idealism-the natural magnanimity, Aristotle would say-of the young,
by being compared with the great and noble public campaign of an attractive
earthly leader, The point seems to be that anyone who desires to be involved in
such a project must move beyond mere assent and approval to personal
involvement and costly sacrifice, in imitation of the sacrifices made by the
leader himself. Confronted with the plan of God heralded in the Gospels, the
coming of God's Kingdom through and in the person of Jesus, the believer can
be expected not only to say Amen but to work actively, strenuously for the
coming of that Kingdom: "Whoever wishes to join me in this enterprise must
be willing to labor with me, that by following me in suffering he may follow
me in glory" (95).
But the real thrust of the meditation is applied in the final point of the
second part, where Ignatius distinguishes "ordinary" from "extraordinary"
commitment, command from counsel-what "all persons who have judgment
and reason" would do, from what "those who wish to give greater proof of
their love and to distinguish themselves in whatever concerns the service of the
eternal King and Lord of all" will offer. This latter group, which the retreatant
is invited at least to aspire to join, show their "greater love" by moving beyond
simple involvement in "the work" of spreading the Kingdom and allowing it to
"come" in them as it came in the person of Christ, through the self-emptying

23

Jove that led to the consummation of the cross. So they "will act against their
sensual ity and carnal and worldly love" -against their normal human drives of
self-interest and self-preservation-to realize the desire they now profess: "to
imitate You in bearing all wrongs and all abuse and all poverty, both actual and
spiritual, should Your most holy majesty deign to choose and admit me to such
a state and way of life" (98).
No mention is made here of humility, yet the specific reference to
sharing the Lord's poverty and abuse, which will be identified as the way of the
highest humility later in the Second Week, doubtless will already have suggested
it to the minds of those nourished with the late medieval spiritual ideals of The

of Christ and the Florentine friar. )lor is an election specifically

referred to here as something to be considered in the days that will follow, yet

Imitation

the retreatant is urged to express, in the solemn surroundings of the whole

heavenly court, an "earnest desire" and a "deliberate choice" to share in Jesus
humility as "a state and way of life." It is a glimpse of the drama to come, a n
anticipation of the commitment to a concrete form of consecrated, apostolic disw
cipleship that Ignatius seems to envisage as the goal of the meditations of the
Second Week.
Significantly, the early days of the Second Week, before the actual
formulation of an election, focus not on the preaching or ministry of Jesus but
simply on his infancy and his home life in an obscure Galilean village. Ignatius
was apparently more concerned that before coming to make an election of a
state in life, the retrcatant savor the cost of the Incarnation, the humility exM
pressed in God's choice to become a poor, frail, unknown human being, than
that he or she consider the actual "work" of Jesus among the people of his time.
So the first meditation of the first day of this Week, the contemplation of the
Incarnation, stresses not only the violence and ignorance of the human
community (102, 107, 108) but also the humility of Mary (108) and the
compassion of the Triune God (102, 106, 108). The contemplation that
follows, on the Nativity of Christ1 as Ignatius proposes it, also focuses attention
on the shocking, paradoxical poverty and obscurity of the Lord's birth, in the
spirit of chapter 2 of Luke's Gospel, and concludes with a dramatic affirmation
of the laborious, saving humility of God: The characters are "making the jour
ney and laboring that our Lord might be born in extreme poverty, and that
after many labors, after hunger, thirst, heat and cold, after insults and outrages,
He might die on the cross, and all this fo r me (116). Appropriately, the
retreatant is invited to become part of the scene by imagining himself or herself
"a poor little unworthy slave"-by letting himself or herself be drawn by
fantasy not only into the sequence of events Luke narrates but into the spirit of
the divine humiliation itself.
On the fourth day of the Second Week, after the retreatant has spent
three days contemplating the birth and childhood of Jesus, Ignatius prepares

24

"To Be More like Christ"

BRIAN E. DALEY, S.J.

him or her mor immediately for making a choice of a state in life by proposing
two key nonscnptural meditations: the Two Standards and the Three "Pairs" or
Classes of Persons. The introduction to the whole election process, which
precedes these two meditations (135), suggests that the deepest alternatives
b et ;:veen which one is called to choose, as a believer-the alternatives of simply
_
l i ving a good C h r i s t i a n l i f e , g i v i n g o n e s e l f to the "work" o f t h e
Commandments, as anyone of "judgment and reason" would d o (see 96), and
that of "making offerings of greater value" (97) by embracing "evangelical
perfection"-have already been mirrored in the events of Jesus' childhood,
which have been occupying the retrcatant's prayer. The meditations on the
Two Standards and Three Classes are the next step in bringing these alternatives
closer to the retreatant's actual choice, through leading him or her to reflect on
the "intention" of Christ and his enemy Satan/0 and so to "see how we ought
to prepare ourselves," by deepening the purity of our motivation and goals, "to
arrive at perfection" in whatever state God moves us to choose.
In the meditation on the Two Standards, pride and humility are openly
presented as the dear thematic centers of the strategies followed by the two
powers at war f or domination of the human heart: the Kingdom of God, real
ize in Chris:, and the nti-Kingd o".' of Satan. Satan's goal is to lead all people
.
. 1s the source of "all other vices (142); the
. 1 srnce this
to overweemng pride,
steps to pride are riches and worldly honors, the possessions and social status
that lead to the domination of others and to a conviction of our own self
contained security. Jesus, on the other hand, means to attract people to humility
as the starting-point f or "all other virtues" (146); and the steps to humility are
prc1sely the ab;;nce of secure possessions and social status: "the highest
spmtual poverty, m any case, and if one has a vocation from God f or it, also
actual poverty," plus "a desire for insults and contempt" (ibid.). The retreatant
is urged to pray earnestly in the "triple colloquy f or the grace of sharing these
first two steps toward s humility with Christ: a poverty realized according to
_
one , s part1 :ul r vocat1on,
an the oprt nity to "bear insults and '\vrongst
.
thereby to 1m1tate him better (147). It lS m a lack of resources and social sta
tus, accepted not simply as deprivations but as a liberating gift of God, that the
retratant becomes a real disciple and discovers the fo undation for all genuinely
Chnst1an virtue in Christlike humilitv.

ul:ate

Lat in version of the Exercises (1547), corrected by Polanco, speaks of

"
.
t e 1nd of Chist and ot the enemy: ad Christi mentem ,:;trendentes, col/at.am cum opposita
"
.
,irnmict.
The Spanish autograph and the two earlier Latin translations use the word intention"

70

The

(intenci& ntentio). The i ea, presumably, is that of

general purpose or strategy, a policy of

both Christ and Satan for Involving men and women in their plans.

.
71 Autograph: erescida soberuia; the earliest Latin translations have arragantem
ntperbi.am, the \1ulgate >uperbia: bar,:;thrum ("the abyss {the pits!] of pride"-a powerful
oxymoron not .tn Ignatius' s original).

25

The meditation on the Three Classes of Persons, which f o llows at this

paint, uses a kind of case study to lead the retreatant to reflect on his or her
deepest motives in approaching the choice of a state in life. The goal is clearly
to promote indifference, detachment from the self-interest that normally biases
,.JI our choices: all three "classes" of people in Ignatius's supposed case want to
be free of their obvious attachment to the money they have acquired, but the
first two avoid the cost of real inner detachment through the familiar tactics of
procrastination and ental manipulation of the issues. Member of the third
class, which clearly IS held up as the model for the retreatants own commg
decisions, genuinely strive to let the will of Gocl1 as it "inspires" them in prayer,
and their own desire to serve God above all things, be the sole norm of how
they receive and use the goods and positions of this world ( 155). And to
achieve this state of balance or indifference-the state of mind presented in the
First Principle and Foundation of the First Week (23) as the realization of the
very purpose of our existence as creatures-the retreatant is urged actually to
pray for poverty as his or her preferred way to serve the Lord: to pray f or what
we have seen, throughout the Second Week, to be a principal gateway to the
humility of discipleship, always in the context of one's paramount desire to
work "for the service and praise of the Divine Goodness" (157).
After a day spent on these two powerful and challenging meditations,
the retreatant returns, on the fifth day of the Second Week, to contemplating
the story of Jesus. Now, however, the focus is on the beginning of his public
life, as he leaves home to be baptized at the Jordan and begin his ministry
(158-63). At the same time, Ignatius instructs (163), the retreatant is to begin
the direct consideration of what state of life he or she will elect to enter, as the
outer form for "leaving home" himself or herself and following Jesus publicly
on his way. It is a time of transition, a time of decision on ho' to focus one's
efforts and desires to "labor" for the coming of God's Kingdom. And here, on
the same fifth day, as a final prelude to the election process itself, Ignatius places
his discussion of Three Kinds of Humility (165-67).

In the Three Kinds of Humility

It is important to note that this text is not presented in the Exercises as
a formal meditation. Ignatius simply says that before reaching a final choice of a
state in life, "in order that we may be filled with love of the true doctrine of
Christ our Lord, it will be very useful to consider attentively the following
Three Kinds of Humility. These should be thought over from time to time
during the whole day, and the three colloquies should also be added" (164).
The passage presents, in other words, a consideration that the retreatant should
keep revolving in his or her mind and occasionally allow to spill over into

"To Be More like Christ"

BRIAN E. DALEY, S.J.

26

fervent prayer, as he or she approaches the election.72 In this way, it serves as

the presum ed background for a good election, just as the text on the First Prin.
.
1ple and Foundation, offered at the start of the First Week of the Exercises, is
intended not so much to be material for a distinct meditation as to be the
preumed background for the deeper self-understanding and conversion to
which the First Week's meditations are meant to lead. The Three Kinds of
Humility seems to be, in other words, a kind of second principle and founda
uon, Jrctly tntended to support the retreatant's decision on how concretely to
be a disciple of Jesus: the principle and foundation of a good election in Christ.
In presenting these ideas to the retreatant, the text leads us to conceive
of humility in a much broader sense than we have met before in the Exercises.
In the Two Standards, humility is presented as a virtue, acquired through the
acceptance of poverty and a lack of social status, and leading to further
development of holiness and moral goodness. Here, humility is presented much
m re comprehensively, as the underlying quality of faith, the basic habit of
_
mmd by which a creature recognizes his or her standing before God as a
creature and allows himself r herself to respond rightly to God's gifts within
he concrete history ?f s lvat10 . The Jim kind of humility, Ignatius suggests, is
_ to become freely
_ a creature 1s
necessary for salvation, a basic requirement if
what he or she has been made to be:

;.

consists in rhis, that as far as possible I so $Uhject '1lld humble myself a s to

obey the law of God our Lord in all things, so that not even were I made lord
of all creation, or to save m y life here on earth, would I consent to violate a
commandment, whether divine or human, that binds me under pain of mortal
sin. {SlbS)
It

11

Some of the early ores on ho to give the Exercises, by experienced Jesuits,

. as a formal meditation. Fr. Eduardo Pereyra,
clea ly treat r.he tt on Three Kinds of Humility

for instance, ln his memorandum of 1562, seerru to include it among the subjects for ptayer in
the fourth ay of t e Se ond We e along wlth the contemplation of rhe coming of the magi
.
(I, Iparragurrre, Di"fectorta Exercttorm
Spiritualium, 1540-1599, in MHSI1 voL 76 {Rome,
1955): 59). Fr, Paul Hotfaeus; in his notes (1575-80) assigns it as the material for regular
m ;d:tanons ?n the day before the election is to be made (ibid., 239}. and Fr. Gil Gon:rllez
.
Davila, wnttng
before 1591, seern.s to consider it as parallel to the meditations on the
Standards and the Ct:sses (ibid., 524). Fr. Polfuco, in his Direcrory of 1573-75, says that the
:etrtant shouJ ? be given the Three Kinds of Humility so that he or she can "turn them over
1n his or her mind" throughout the whole day prior to the election, and that he or she should
al devot ;wo or three full hours of formal prayer to then1 (ibid., 308f. and n. 146). Fr,
1daco M.1ro, ho'\\rever, who was commissioned by Fr, Mercurian to draw up an official
tr tory in 1582 ad who was concerned r return to the authentic practice of Ignatius,
insists hat the text ts not propcsed as a substtrute for any of the day's contemplations of the
. of Chnst, but is simply to be kept in mind all day, "even during
mys:en of the hfe
medn:attons, bur only at the appropriate moment, ..,,.-ith rhe help of the triple colloquy taken
from the Standards" (>bid., 3971.).

17

re, although
of accepting fully the fact that I am a creatu
1t is the humility
a!!
of realizing that I can never be the "lord of
. telligent and free: the humility
here
life
that I cannot ultimately ''save my
tion'' in any genuine sense and
humility of accepting responsibility to a
the
r;
powe
rth" through my own
on e a
sts;
making and not manipulable in my own intere
ral order not of my own
ative
altern
God, and that is the only
humility that recognizes God alone as
sin- Without this degree of humility,
n
huma
real
all
at the heart of
to the pride
_
a he.
destroys himself or herself by lmng out
a creature only
bes as "more perfect than
The second kind of humility Ignatius descri
of God's
the same indifference, the same preference
the first"; it consists in
dation
Foun
other things, that the First Principle and
s ervice and praise above all
right use of human freedom:
held up as the standard for the
that I neither desire nor 31:1 I inclined
I Possess it if m y attitude of mind is such
honor rather than dishonor, to
seek
to
,
poverty
to have riches rather than
ed only in either alternative I
desire a long life rather than a short life. provid
and the salvation of m y
Lord
would promote equally the service of God our

:ea
:

soul. (166)

another brief descriptio'.' of his

Immediately after saying this, Ignatius adds
_
negative terms of srn: "Bestdes thts
second kind of humility, this time in the
supposes that not for all creation, nor
indifference, this se<:ond kind of humility
it a venial sin." Some authors have
to- save my life, would I consent to comm
discussion of the phenomenology of
seen here a distinct step in lgnatius's
nting us with four rather than three
Christian humility, so that he ends by prese
he is simply trying to clarify the
kinds;" it seems more likely, however, that
in terms both of obediem::e to the
parallel between the first and second kinds
_
es that obedience. In this second
will of God and of the choice of self that violat
desire for God's service and
kind of humility, submission to the will of God,
n creature's will that even
huma
glory, has become so centrally the focus of the
anced desires for our
unbal
of
ons
minor inconsistencies in our choices-expressi
In the humility of
te.
opera
to
e
own pleasure, security, or self-advancement-ceas
sts consistently
intere
own
our
g
affirming God as first of all beings, in settin
identity and
our
of
.ation
realb
below our love of him, we come to the full
vocation.74

kinds of humility seem to

On the surface, at least, lgnatius's first two
ive it-with the humility
conce
arily
have little to do with humility as we ordin
the fruit of self-denial;
is
that
ce,
of the Two Standards meditation, for instan
full implications of
the
called
be
they express, instead, simply what might
is to be a creature,
it
what
t
accep
"creaturely realism." But to recognize and
73 So AdnCs, "Humilir,.. 1174.
de
degrCs de l'humilitC d'aprCs salnr Ignace," Ret1ue
14 See F. Prat, '"Sur les trois
l'ascese er de la mystique 2 {1921): 255.

28

BRIAN E. DALEY,

S.J.

totally dependent on God for both being and happiness but capable of rejecting
that dependence in favor of a counterfeit and ultimately destructive self.
sufficiency-to recognize fuily both what we are and what God is-is to realize
what Christian humility is at its root: not a feeling of unworthiness, not a way
of putting oneself down for no apparent reason, but a prac-iical grasp that God
alone is ultimately desirable and that we are not, in ourselves, worthy ultimate
goals for choice and action. As Erich Przywara observes, following Thomas
Aquinas, in his great theological commentary on the Spiritual Exercises, humilitv
is not primarily a way of regarding ourselves at all, but is reverence before God
as creator and submission to God Jn his concrete will to save us."75
It is in lgnatius's third kind of humility that this reverence and
submission take a new and mysterious turn, leaving the realm of ethical norms
and creaturely self-understanding to enter with Jesus into the full unfolding of
that saving will in human history.
This is the most perfect kind of humility. It consists in this. If w e suppose the
first and second kind attained, then whenever the praise and glory of the

Divine Majesty v;rould be equally served, In order to imitate and be in reality

more like Christ our Lord, I desire and choose poverty with Christ poor,
rather than riches; insuhs with Christ loaded with them, rather than honors; I

desire to be accounted as vtorthless and a fool for Christ1 rather than to b e

esteemed as wise and prudent i n this world. S o Christ was treated before me."
{167)

Several things should be noted about this challenging text. First is its
and
striking emphasis on imitating Christ. The first two kinds of humility
new
are described only in terms of our relationship to God, as the creator of our
being and as the one ultimately desirable goal of our choosing. Here, with that
"creaturely rea1ism"' and that ordering of affective priorities presuppased, Chris
tian humility deliberately strives to conf orm itself to "that mind, which is in
Christ Jesus" (Phil. 2:5) by "emptying itself' in a way that reflects and realizes
the pattern by whicb Jesus revealed the self-emptying love of God. All the
tendency of the Second Week of the Exercises to see humilitv as the central
characteristic of the saving history of the Incarnation here re;ches a kind of
climax in the direct appeal to let a desire f or this same humility-expressed, as
always, primarily in terms of poverty and lack of honor or social status-be the
guiding affective element in the retreatant's decision on how to shape his or her
own saving history, how to realize his or her own "incarnation" as Jesus'
disciple and companion.
Second, it is important to note that the third kind of humility, as
presented here, is more a question of desires, of preferences, and even prejudices

75 Erich Przywara, Dew Semper Afaior: Theologie der Exerzitien (Munich, 1961), 352;
see also Thomas Aquinas Summa Theo/ogi.a: Ila Il<e, q. 161, a. 6.

"To Be More like Christ"

29

dlan it is of behavior. Part of the difficulty in interpretation that the teJ<t has
ed to modern writers results from their having tried to find here a formula
tinely applicable to concrete daily choices, or an abstract and universal prin
pie for perfection in the spiitual life." Similarly, scholastic commentatos on
.
the passage smce F ranctSco Suarez have been puzzled by the apparent condmon
imposed on this Christlike humility, in the phrase "whenever the praise and
glory of the Divine Majesty would be equally served." Is it not always for God's
greater glory that we choose to imitate Christ more closely? ls one then not
always bound to choose the way of greater humility if one desires to glorify
God most fully?77

Po,:

In factl as other modern commentators have shown in detail, Ignatius is

speaking
of God's "praise and glory," here or elsewhere in the Exercises and
not
Constitutions, in abstract scholastic terms; the "glory of God" for him (as for
Jrenaeus in the second century) normally means that God should be known,
loved, and served by his creatures-that God should be revealed in history and
that this revelation should be the "life" and "light of men and women" (John
1:4)." The question of how the "glory and praise of the Divine Majesty" is
"served" is for him normally a practical apostolic one, not a question of the
metaphysics of spiritual perfection: How can God be better known and loved,
in the present concrete historical context? So the real point of the Third Kind
of Humility might be expressed in a paraphrase such as this: If I presuppose
fidelity to God's commandments and to the objective demands of my
conscience) if I presuppose a desire to serve God as my primary motive and

76 See, for example, Charles Boyer, ..Le troisiCme degre d'humi!ite de S. Ignace de
Loyola et la plus grande gloire de Dieu," RA,M 12 (1931): 162-69. lie sees here "la proposition
doctrinale d'un Ctat de perfection" (163).
77 F. Su.lrez De religi'one Socieratis fem 9.5, dub. 9, 23 (Opera omnia [Paris: Vives,
18n], 1025); cf. C. Boyer, "Le troisiCme degrC,.; A. Gaultier, "Le troisiCme degre d'humiiitf: de
S. lgnace: L'hypothese impossible," RAM 12 {1931): 218-29. Suarez's answer is that choosing
the way of poverty and humility is always, in itself. more perfect and therefore more
conducive to God's glory and praise, but that the text i.nvii:es the retreatant to prescind from
this doctrinal truth in his or her own mindi as a kind of intellectual exercise, in order to allow
himself or herself to be motivated simply by the love of Christ (De religone, 26 (1027). In
effect, the retreatant would be saying, even if a choice of poverty and obscurity were not in
itself for God's greater glory-which it is, other things being equal-I would choose it to he
like Jesus. See Gaultier, "Le troisiCme degrC," 227ff. Boyer argues that such a mental "ahstrac
tion" ls impermissible when one is dealing with the baste principles of Christian perfection
and that, therefore, the restrictive clause ln Ignatius's text js, in fact, nonsensical \Le troisiCme
degrt!," 163, 166f). The third degree of humility, in his view , is simply a clumsily written
statement of where God's greater glory, in itself, always lies.
78 For a good discussion of Ignatius's conception of God's glory in the context of his
understanding of humility, see Roger Cantin, "Le troisieme clegrC d'humilitC et la gloire de
Dieu selon saint Ignace de Loyola," Sciences ecc!#siastiques 8 {1956): 237-66, esp. 253ff. See also,
for example1 Irenaeus Adversus haereses 4.20.7.

30

BRIAN E. DALEY, S.J.

"To Be More like Christ"

desire, then in cases where poverty and lack of personal honor seem not to
limit the effectiveness of my efforts to make God better known and loved in the
world, I will prefer them for myself, simply as a way of being more closely and
concretely conformed to the model of Jesus. In fact, it may be important for

On the evening of the fifth day [of the Second Week], after the director has
asked for an account of what has happened that day, he should notice whether
the retreatant is disposed, as far as the affect is concerned, to undertake the
elections. For the retreatant's disposition should be such that in the matter of
follo wing the way of the precepts or the counsels his or her will is placed in
the hands of God, as in a kind o f balance; or rather, as far as the retreatant is
concerned, that he or she be inclined towards the side of the counsels, if such
should be understood to be the will of God. But if it is noticed that the will is
tending rather towards the (way of the] precepts, and shrinks from the way of
the counsels, the retreatant is not well disposed, nor is it to be hoped that he or
she will make a good election. For the affect that is turned away from the more
perfect way and inclined towards the less perfect will draw the mind to think
up reasons th:at conform to such an affective state. With such persons, then,
one should not go on to the three times of making an election {that is, $17588], but the exercises of the sixth day could be given to them, to meditate on
them the next day; , , , and the person should be urged to dispose himseH or
herself to begging God for resignation [to his will] by repeating the exercises on
the three classes of people and the three kinds of humilicy, asking, as we have
said above, that if ir is more or equally pleasing to God, he might incline one's
affect towards choosing the counsels rather than the precepts."at

wealth; it may make an apostolic difference that I have some position of

promience in public or academic life, that I receive some positive kind of
.
recognition; but as a person focused affectively on the Lord, I will feel a nat

ural-o supernatura -hesitation, a reluctance to accept these things unless their

apostohc relevance 1s clear. The burden of proof, so to speak, will b e on the
Holy Spirit to show me that the less poor, less obscure, less humble way is in
fact the way God is calling me to follow-"
The meaning of this whole consideration of humility becomes clearer.
th n, _if we remen ;ber tha: the Spiritual Exercises does not offer it as a gene
pnnc1ple of the spmtual hfe, but as a help to prepare for a choice of a state in
life that will be as free as possible from our ingrained self-centeredness as full a
disciple
ealiation as possible of Jesus' concrete call to each individual to be
.
m h!S rnuge. For Ignatms, it seems, and his early followers, the issue usually at
stake in the election of the Exercises, when it was fo rmally undertaken, was to

rai

choose between the "way of the precepts" and the "way of the counsels": be
tween living a good Christian life in the secular world, trying there to keep the
commandments and do God's will, and giving oneself to the more demanding
forms of total ded1cat1on to God that normally found expression in the religiotJS

The consideration on Three Kinds of Humility seems to have been meant both
as a help towards such indifference and as a test of the retreatant's readiness for
the election. Thus Ignatius himself observes, in the brief notes on giving the
Exercises he dictated to Polanco:
First of all one must insist that any who will make the elections enter into
them with complete resignation of their will, and, if it is possible, that they
:each the third d ree of humility, in which for their part, they are more
rnclJ_ed to ,..hat :S more conformed to the counsels and to the example of
Chr1st our Lorri. tf God should be equally served. Any who are not in the
indifference of the second degree are nor ready to put themselves in the
position of making a choice, and it is better to keep them engaged in other
exercises before moving on to it. 80

n See J. Delepierre, "Note sur ies trois degr&. d'humilitC." l\Jouvel!e revue theologique
70 (1948), 963-75, esp. 972ff.
!O Directori.a

1955), 74ff.

lgnati.tn.t Auto grap/Jll, 17,

ed, I. Iparraguirre, MHSI, vol. 76 (Rome,

31

Polan co himself explains this delicate point more fully in his own unfinished
J)irectory of 1573-75:

God's service that I make use of some material possessions, even of considerable

life. If a person was not in a state of real indifference with regard to this level of
choice, he or she was not considered ready to make an election in freedom and
openness to divine guidance and should not be allowed to go forward with it.

The consideration of Three Kinds of Humility in the Exercises, then, in

the minds of Ignatius and his early associates, is really the concluding piece of a
strategy developed throughout the Second Week, of preparing the retreatant to
be involved in the work and lifestyle of Christ as fully as possible, in a way
conformed to God's concrete will for his or her personal share in salvation his
tory. Although the original texts of the Exercises always speak of three "kinds"
(in Spanish, maneras; in Latin, species, modos) rather than "degrees" or "grades"
of humility, the early directories and even Ignatius'> own dictated notes often
use

the more evaluative language of "degrees"; this is implied, too, in the

Exercises' insistence that the second kind is "more perfect" than the first and the
third "more perfect" than the second. Clearly the whole movement of the
consideration is to lead the retreatant towards actually wanting the third kind o f
humility for himself o r herself, as far as that is possible; a s the official

Directorium of 1591-99 observes, "These three degrees ... only contain one
principal point, namely, the desire to attain that third degree of humility."" It is
only in this desire to empty oneself with Christ that the indifference of the
81
81

Directorium P. JoanniJ Alfonsi d" Polanco, 78, MHSI1 76:309f.

Directoria conscripta iussu R. P. C!autlii Aquaviva 29.8, h<tHSl, 76:71-lf.

32

second degreethe indifference necessary to make a choice simply in conformity

withGod's will-is actually secured."
In its original context within the Exercises, then, this consideration is
closely linked to the process of election, which seems to have been designed
principally for young people making major vocational decisions. Clearly,
however, the Exercises were used for a variety of purposes and given to a
variety of people, even in St. Ignatius's time. Although the early directories
make it dear that those whose state in life is already clearly dedicated toGod in
some way, particularly Jesuits and other religious, should not be induced to go
through the election process formally, they were clearly encouraged from tbe
beginning to use the whole of the Exercises, including the main meditations of
the Second Week, as a way of growing in self-knowledge and deepening their
commitment to the life of discipleship they had undertaken." An Italian note at
the end of the "dictated" directory attributed to Ignatius himself makes this
point in what are, to anyone living jn the Ignatian tradition, familiar terms:
In the Second Week, where the elections are c oncerned, it is not appropriate to

have those who are already settled ill their state of life deliberate about that

state of life; but in place of this deliberation, one may propose one of two
things, which they may want to choose. The first is when the divlrle service is
the same and without sin on one's on or one's neighbor 's part, to desire

injuries and insults and to be made low in all things with Christ, to be dressed
in his uniform and to imitate him in this aspect of his cross; or rather to be dis
posed to suffer patiently everything of this kind, when they happen to one, for
love of Christ our Lord. 85

For Ignatius and his contemporaries, speaking of choosing humility

with Christ was clearly a way of speaking about love. A tract on the Ignatian
approach to making an election, written in the early 1540s by the Spanish
theologian and diplomat Dr. Pedro Ortiz (to whom Ignatius himself had given
-1 .
-- J ue
"<
;x:e
epterre,

'4: "L''1ndi'
' h'eve
. degre's, " 9o
"Note sur Ies tron
nerence sac
norma!ement . . . clans l 'humil ite du 3e degre. L'une et l'autre sont plus que des vifritk a
admettre OU des objectifs paisager s a conquCrir,'' Cf, B. Pottier. "L' Election/; in A. Chapelle et

et thiologique
(Brussels : Institut d'Etudes Thtologiques, 1990). 298. As in the meditation on the Kingdom,
the first two kinds of humility are based on the recognition of truths that "everyone who has
judgment and reason"' would admit, but the retreatant is assumed to be at least open to
moving beyond the "ordinary" level of Christian practice.

.::!., eds., Les Exercices SpiritJtels d'lgnace de Loyola: Un commentaire littbal

84 See the Directory of Polanco, no. 92 (MHSI 76:318) and the officiaJ Diroctorium of
1591/99, no. 91 (ibid., 628}; the Brevis Instructio on giving the Exercises, which may he notes
by Fr. Everard Mercurian for some conferences he gave in France in 1569-70, even suggests a
person already committed to a permanent state in life might use the election process to

..choose" between two virtues or between the second and third kinds of humility {no. 52,
ibid., 252f.).
85

"To Be More

BRIAN E. DALEY, S.J.

MHSI 76'78.

:,<,:._-.- . .... .

33

like Christ"

o in 1538} and his brother Francisco, a well

Exercises at Monte Cassin
ty
preacher, speaks consistently of the three kinds of hum1l1
\nown Franciscan
obey
to
desire
the
of
or degrees of the love ofGod and
.
r.ither as "three kinds
his divine majesty."" As the brothers Ortiz paraph rase
serve
and
te
: d mita
. text they make it clear that the context of such an election is clearly
'
'tD
S
JgnaUUS
' way, 1n pious
to use one's ta1ents and resources 1n an aposto )1c
.
the desire
merits of two
the
" But when
s
k " fo r the "praise and glory of God."
fGoo' s
.
seem equal, as far as the promotion
.Iternative plans of life and work
st poo
Chr
1th
hoice is to seek P:>verty

glory is concerned) the r:i ost pefect

secure,
more
1s
: because this way
exclusion and insults v.r1th Christ rejected
fromGod; but above all because
less worldly, less distracting

the

"

'

Jesus Christ, whose intense love

in the lo wer state one imitates n1ore our Lord
a loer state, to resembl e and
such
s
toward
us
incline
and
is able to move
holds more present bef?re
imitate him more; and because in this state the soul
world freely chooswg
this
into
its eyes the memory of its spouse, who came
."88
iples
sc
di
beloved
such a state, and taught ;t to his

and very great mercy ofGod/' "a

So the desire for this kind of state is "a special
that can no longer be JUSt1fi.ed
desire
a
rich and precious gift";8' it is, in the end>
.
al share rn "the love of
person
a
g,
in rational terms, but a mystical blessin
which has been revealed in
Christ, which surpasses knowledge" (Eph. 3:19) and
the cross.

ity Przywara
In his illuminating chapter on the Three Kinds :'f Humil '.
Exer
al
Spmtu
the
of
art
h
the
is
s
is':s srmpl

points out that the election proce

1an faith,
Chnst
of
art
h
the
really
IS
Chnst
<;
because choosing to be formed with
h1St
within
will
saving
God's
of
ry, his
out
and since, in the actual working
love,
his
of
choice
our
Son,
the
of
ptying
love has been revealed in the self-em
" of
"ascent
the
in
not
ed
express
finally
is
our submission to his will, always
v.-:
whlch
in
ptying,
self-em
similar
a
of
t
achievement so much as in the "descen
Goo.'
of
mystery
the
into
es
ourselv
experience the transcendence beyond
the 'righteousness
Przywara sees the First Kind of Humility as what Paul calls
ed
unles
ness
hteous
self-rig
e
'. rt 1s temper
of the law": something that can becom
n
e
1ch-ev
wh
m
xt,
t
s's
Ignatiu
in
ed

by the "divine foolishness" of love express

_
.s
God
g
breakin
r
conside
not
would
I
at this stage of identification with ChristKind
law "even if I were to be made lord of all creation"!" The Second

'_

85

es, Sam:ti Ignatii de Loyola

Tractatus de electiane 1-6: J. Calveras and C. de Dalmas

Exercitia Spiriluali..t. 635-37,

87

Ibid., 5 (MHSI 100:635).

"Ibid., MHSI l00:6J6.

"Ibid., s, 6. MHSI 100,636, 637) .
e der Exerzitien 1:352f.
90 Przywara, Deus Semper Major: Theologi
91

Ibid., J55f.

34

BRIAN E. DALEY,

"To Be More like

S.J.

expresses this same rash generosity in seeking perfect indifference before the will
of God, a habitual inner obedience and reverent "fear of the Lord" that
Przywara likens to Old Testament wisdom-an attitude of reverent openness

before the divine mystery like that of Job, which avoids Stoic self-sufficiency by
recognizing the limitations of our own intuition for what is right.91 But it
only in the Third Kind of Humility, in the simple desire to share fully in thei
way of Jesus, that these first two "Old Testament" forms of humility find their!
fulfillment; "for since there is really only a single order of salvation, and sincei
this is the order realized in the scandal of the cross and in being crucified intoi

this same scandal ... , so there is only a single genuine humility: the one'
humility of the emptied and oppressed and humiliated Christ. .,, The Third1

Kind of Humility, in a sense, lets go of all the retreatant's earlier calculations of:
what is "better" or "more for the praise and service of the Divine Majesty" and
simply desires, so far as is possible, to enter into the movement of God's love
for the world, to be drawn by grace, with the incarnate Word, into an "ever
greater descent into the ever-greater God."91 It is the final preparationt in terms
of desires, for the concrete life choice that is to lead the retreatant himself into

the Paschal Mystery, the realization of the Kingdom of God in the crucified and
risen Christ: into the Third and Fourth Weeks of the Exercises, and so into the
final sealing of the mutual gifts of love, perceived and desired throughout the
whole journey, in simple terms of "Take, Lord, and receive ... all that I have
and possess." In the self-emptying of love, the humility framing a good election
can finally be seen for what it is.

Humility in Jesuit Life Today

t the end of this rather tortuous survey of the role of humility in the

Christian spiritual tradition and in the lgnatian Exercises, we might

well still ask ourselves, What use can we make of all this today? How
does it speak to our own spiritual needs and desires as men and women of the
late twentieth century? Is humility still an intelligible and suggestive category to

use in trying to express basic human responses to the mysterious grandeur and
goodness of God? Can we still say, as m y novice master liked to say thirty and

more years ago, that the phrase "humble service" captures the heart of the
Ignatian ideal? These are questions each of us must attempt to answer for
himself or herself, but we might at least draw a f ew general, preliminary
conclusions from all we have said here.

"Ibid., 358.
9-J

Ibid., 360.

"lhid., 363.

Christ"

35

First, the humility held up as an ideal in the Scriptures and the Spiritual

cannot be justified simply in philosophical or psychological ters. It

.
directly
from the expenence of biblical revelatmn: from the uniquely
s
grow
ju.daeo-Christian insight into our status as free, self-determining creatures of a
Goa on whom we utterly depend for our being and who invites but does not

Jf#rdses

for ce us to accept our dependence in gratitude and to give our being back to
bim in love. It grows from the uniquely Christian recognition that "God has so
loved the world that he sent his only Son," who revealed, in his life of
obscurity, service, and fidelity unto death, the love that God is, and who calls
us to find our salvation by realizing

his way of love in ourselves Oohn 3:16f., 1

4:7-12). Because it is so determined by the biblical presentation of the
person and acts of Christ, Christian humility seems to be one of those few
c:t:ntral categories of faith that biblical religion does not draw from the wider
store of human wisdom and that therefore will always appear paradoxical,
dangerous, even nonsensical to the secular mind. For this very reason, humility
seem s to be one of the categories that distinguish Christian love and Christian
goodness from a love and goodness not illumined by faith. It is one of our basic

John

ways of responding in faith to the Christian Mystery."

Second, the humility Ignatius describes as the "third" and highest kind

is really as we said above, a question of desires, of preferences, rather than of

habitual concrete practices: it is an ideal for our ultimate loving, a sense thatt in

the most concrete shaping of our lives, union with Christ as he lived is what we
want above all things. As such, it does not preempt apostolic decision making
or excuse us from governing our daily lives by prudence, charity and common

sense. Nor is it something we normally can expect to possess as a result of

thought and discipline, a stable stage of spiritual growth in which we may
eventually find ourselves; it is a grace to be prayed for in the context of free de
cision (168), a desire that Ignatius hoped his companions would at least desire
to experience as they set about following Christ."

95 Ruth Burrows writes as follows: "Natural religion is essentially man's effort to

reach God. Christianity demands a deathj it brings it about. In some mysterious way man
must die to himself in order to receive new life as a pure gift from God.... Wrong ideas of
this death have led to a distortion of christianity whlch has rightly won contempt but w e
have t o note that a true understanding o f it, or rather that measure of understanding which w e
call gain before w e ourselves enter i.nto it and know its beatitude, must cause revulsion. , , , It
calls for a profound humility, and humility Is not an attitude native to man; it is not on the
list of \irtues which make us human. It enters the scene only with revelation, only with Jesus
111h o is humility personified, the love which empties self in order to give itself to the beloved.
And Jesus is the revelation of the Father. Humility hrui everything to do with love" {To Believe
in]"'"' [London, Sheed and Ward, 1978], 22f.}
96

See especially General E:xamen [102]: in George E, Ganss, trans,, The

of Jesuit Sources, 1970), 108 .

of the Mciety ofJesus (St. Louis: Institute

Constitutions

BRIAN E. DALEY,

36

S.J.

"To Be More like Christ"

Third, understood against the background of the earlier spiritual tra

dition, humility is not simply an interior gift, but carries a strongll"
communitarian and apostolic llavor (see especially Phil. 2:1-11). It suggests the;
service of others (Mark 10:43-45), involvement in the concrete world of limit
and sinful people (Augustine), voluntary obedience to teachers and religious
leaders (Cassian, Benedict), compassion and charity for fellow creature
(Bernard), the practical attempt to overcome barriers of class, wealth, and status!
(Savonarola). So it is understandable that Ignatius was deeply concerned that
those seeking to determine the shape of their lives as Christians-especially
young candidates for the Society-should experience, as far as possible, the grace
of a creaturely and Christlike humility. By freeing us from the paralyzing isola
tion of pride-from being imprisoned within our own views of the world, our
own drives and emotions, our own agenda-humility allows us to walk and ac t
with Christ, reaching out with him to others, and ultimately to God.
.

Fourth, the Christian tradition has generally seen humility as rooted in

a realistic knowledge of oneself (see especially Bernard, Thomas :l. Kempis). For
this reason, Christian humility is certainly not opposed to the Aristotelian ideal
of magnanimity: an honest appreciation of one's own potential, a balanced sense
of one's value before God and in the human community. Although St.
Bonavenmre's argument that true magnanimity is really courageous Christian
humility may strike us today as a bit forced, the paradoxical instinct of
Christian writers that these two virtues are in fact complementary should not
surprise us, if we understand the terms . Rea! human greatness of soul, even in
the eyes of the classical philosophers, is anything but self-preoccupation and self
advertisement; it is the instinctive and unself-conscious ability simply, publicly,
unaffectedly to be what we know we are at our best. And Christian humility is
not, as we said at the start) a negative self-image or the conviction that we are
worthless; it is the realization that we are sinners, potentially and in fact
something that only the greatest of creatures are capable of being-and the de
liberate desire, in the face of our sinful reality, to draw closer to God along the
same way of self-emptying love by which God has drawn closer to us. From a
Christian perspective, humility is the height of human freedom, just as freedom
is the greatest of human gifts.
Lastly, the Society of Jesus has always cultivated classical magnanimity
as an ideal: it has defended its reputation and just interests from prejudice and
slander, striven after quality in its corporate enterprises, associated easily with
the influential in the world, encouraged competitiveness in its schools, urged its
members and friends to work and to pray for generosity. Yet in Ignatius's eyes,
the Society was, and should always seek to remain, "this least congregation.""
Young people desiring to become part of the Society were to be tested above all

97

General ExanJen, [1], in

Crmrtitutions> p.

75, p. 75 n. 1.

37

in humiliation, by a series of dramatic "experiences" of poverty and submission

others;" and Ignatius continued to deal out humiliating reprimands and
to senior fathe:s, even to his clo est associates, apparently as kind of
penances.
formation, a way of continually probmg and deepemng their
uing
contin
the
crucified Christ." The climax of the General Examen-the broad
with
unio n
description of the Society's ideals and practices written by Ignatius as a kind of
vocation pamphlet for prospective candidates-is the famous passage vividly
pcrtraying what the Exercises call the Third Kind of Humility as the goal of
Jesuit asceticism and the spiritual bean of Jesuit life.'00 To be "clothed with the
same clothing and uniform of their Lord"-to be exposed to undeserved insults
and the hostility of outsiders and even fellow Jesuits-is something that the
candid ate, talented and idealistic as he is, must be ready to "accept and suffer
with patience, through the help of God's grace,"'' and even to see as beneficial,
as something one might at least "desire to desire/1 as a way "to imitate and
follow him."'" This paradox of Jesuit ideals and behavior should not be written
off as simply part of the Baroque rhetoric of the 1540s; it reveals a tension con
stantly present within the Society's enduring vocation of preaching, in an ef
fective and humanly attractive way, the humiliated Christ as savior of the
world.
to

One finds this same tension today, for instance, in our recent emphasis
.on the "preferential love of the poor" as a freely chosen principle guiding our
choice of ministries and as one of the main criteria fo r ensuring the honesty and
credibility of our work for the Gospel."" To conceive of our identification with
the materially poor in the way we live and the works we do, not simply as part
of a program of social reform, but as the expression of "a love like Christ's
own" and a way towards "communion" with him in his Kingdom, lo+ is to
reemphasize one of Ignatius's own central spiritual and apostolic concerns.10s
Yet the same recent documents of the Society that commit us to identifying
ourselves with the poor also sketch out a vision of apostolic action that
98

General &.amen, [80H90), in

99

See the examples in De Guiben, The ]it5, 78-811 along with De Guibert's

comments.

too

Wt

Sent

General Exmnen, [101HlOl1 m Co mtitution, pp. 107-9.

Constitutions,

107f.

See the document of the Thinythird General Congregation, Companions

into Today1s
1'

own

Ibid., [102), in Constitutions, p. 109.

102 Jhid. [l01Hl021 in

lC3

Co nstitu tio ns, pp. 10C-1C3.

ofJesus

World {St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1984), ,52 (p. 63).

Ibid.

105 See, for instance, the letter dat5d August 7, 1547, written by Polanco in lgnatius's
name to the Jesuits in the college at Padua (Ep. 186 [Epp. Ign. 1.572-577]; also in William J.
Young, S.J., trans., letters of St. Ignatius of Lcryola (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1959],
146-50).

BRlAN E. DALEY,

38

$.J.

presumes the highest degree of institutional self-confidence and human sophi,.

tication, involving long years of education, continuing research, articulate self..
expresion and enon:;iou:, generosi: y :nd breadth of spirit."' Humility and mag.

.
nammtty, thtnkmg little and "thinking big," are not only not opposed to each
other in the Jesuit scale of virtues but actually require each other if either is to
be realized in a corporate way. Without Ignatian humility, our projects simply
become expressions of collective triumphalism or ideological crusades, ultimately
dehumanizing ourselves and de-Christianizing our work; without Jgnatian
magnanimity, our "option for the poor" becomes a self-punishing romanticism
of protest, ultimately leading to hopelessness and cynical alienation.
On the more personal level, too, the desire to share in the poverty and
humiliation of Christ has an essential role to play in keeping our individual and
corporate idealism alive, keeping our generosity high. Each of us faces the
inevitable process of what Teilhard de Chardin referred to as "diminishment":'"
the growing weakness and failure of our personal resources and energies,
through aging, illness, and disappointment, always ending in death. Together, as
a Society, we face a host of threatening uncertainties: smaller numbers and an
increasing average age in most of our provinces, economic insecurity) growing
hostility or indifference from a world less and less respectful of the Christian
ideal, even a less central and less honored role for ourselves in the apostolic
activities of the Roman Catholic Church. It seems that poverty, limitations in
our work for the Kingdom, misunderstanding, "insults and contempt," will
assuredly be part of our collective future, in new and perhaps dramatic ways,
just as weakness and death face each of us as individuals.The question is always
whether we are able to accept these things freely and generously as an
authenticating context for our work as disciples of Jesus-whether we will be
given the grace to welcome and even to desire them in the way God offers them
to us and still find the energy, the greatheartedness, and quiet self-confidence to
go on proclaiming the Kingdom of God according to our Institute and our in
dividual charisms. We can only hope the answer is yes.

Conclusion

gnatius, as we have mentioned, dearly thought it important that those

thinking of joining the Society be confronted explicitly, even somewhat
brutally, with the prospect of self-emptying that is characteristic of the way

"To Be More like Christ"

of Jes us and his companions. Could it be that some of the lack of success we
hav e experienced in attracting and retaining vocations to the Society over the
past twenty years may be due to our reluctance to challenge young inquirers
or even to challenge ourselves-to desire Ignatius's Third Kind of Humility?
Could it be that our desire to be affirming, to preach a positive image of God,
to pro mote freedom and fulfillment and "feeling good about yourself," has
ended by emptying the Gospel of so much of its challenge and its reality that
few are interested in giving their lives to preaching it to others with us? Could
it be that we will only again arouse the natural magnanimity, the
greatheartedness or l'<"ictAo\fuxia of the spiritually young, by deliberately
drawing them-with us-more deeply into "the mind, which was in Christ
Jesus, who ... emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, ... and humbled
himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross" (Phil. 2:5-8)? If
so, we will have to practice what we preach.
The German poet Holderlin once quoted as "the epitaph of Loyola" an
enigmatic phrase that Hugo Rabner, nearer to our own time, rightly identified
as coming from a sumptuous commemorative volume produced by the Flemish
Jesuits in 1640 to mark the centenary of the Society's founding:

Non

coerceri maximo,

contineri

tamen

minimo dioinum est. 1011

The phrase could, of course, be taken simply as a reference to the Incarnation, a

pithy and classic summary of how Christian faith believes God acts in his
creation. But it also seems to express with peculiar accuracy the interplay of
magnanimity and humility, outward-oriented energy and self-effacing submission
to limit and deprivation, that characterizes Ignatian spirituality, as an outgrowth
of the love of Jesus and of personal, even mystical identification with him on
his way. Not to be daunted or held back by the greatest challenges, personal or
corporate, yet to let ourselves willingly become "little people" in the world's
eyes and our own, bound up with other "little" people and "little" things,
because God has become "little" in Jesus: this is the "divine" paradox that our
vocation calls us to proclaim and to live, as companions of Ignatius and of
his Lord.

!OS

'"Not to be constrained by the greatest thing, but to be contained in the smallest

thing, is divine" (Hugo Rabner, "Die Grabschrift des Loyola," Ignatius wn Layo/a als Mensch

und The.ologe [Freiburg: Herderj 1964], 422-40, esp. 42Jt). The phrase is not
an

Sccj for example, GC 32, Decree 4 ,159-61 in Docu ments of tbe ThirtyFirst and

Tlnrty-Second General Congr<!g.irions of the Society of Jesus (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources.

19n), 4311.; GC 33,

t07

"Co mimions

of Jesu" 1146-49 (pp. 60-62).

The Divine Milieu (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960), 80-111, esp, 84-90.

or iginally

patt of

"epitaph" at all, but appears in a flowery anonymous memorial inscription to Ignatius in

the Imago Primi suli Societdtis Iesu (A.\ntwerp: f..ioret, 1640 280-82.
106

39