On Humility (A Conversation Between an Elder and His Disciple) (Part 2)

At other times affliction is permitted to torment the soul for a prolonged period. Once, from a sudden affliction, I felt something like a nervous blow to the heart, and spent three months confined to my cell, shaken by a nervous fever. “God is ever doing great and inscrutable things with us, glorious and terrible things.” We must understand that we are His creatures, wholly in His power, and therefore, in complete submission, we must “commit ourselves and one another and all our life to Christ our God.” I will not refrain from telling you the following remarkable incident, which sheds some light on the action of humility directly from the heart, without a prior thought of humble-mindedness.[1] Once I was subjected to punishment and disgrace.[2] When they subjected me to it, I suddenly felt a warmth throughout my whole body, and with it a certain inexplicable deadness; after which there suddenly blazed from my heart a desire to receive public shaming and blows from an executioner in the public square, on account of my sins. At this, a flush rose on my face; an inexpressible joy and sweetness encompassed me entirely; through them I remained for two weeks in a rapture, as if outside myself. Then I understood with clarity and precision that the holy humility in the martyrs, united with Divine love, could not be satisfied by any torments. The martyrs received cruel torments as gifts, as a refreshing drink that quenched the thirst for humility blazing in them. Humility is an inexpressible grace of God, incomprehensibly comprehended by the spiritual perception of the soul alone.[3]

Disciple. You promised to explain to me how humility is wrought through prayer.

Elder. The union of humility with prayer is very clearly set forth by the Venerable Abba Dorotheus. “Continual exercise in prayer,” the Saint says, “counteracts pride. Evidently: the humble and devout man, knowing that it is impossible to perform any virtue without God’s help and protection, does not cease to pray to God unceasingly, beseeching Him to show him mercy. He who constantly prays to God, if he is found worthy to do anything right, knows through Whom this was done, and cannot exalt himself or attribute it to his own strength, but ascribes all his improvements to God, thanks Him ceaselessly, and prays to Him ceaselessly, trembling lest he be deprived of help from on high, lest his own weakness thereby be revealed. He prays out of humility.” If anyone, during his prayer, is found worthy of compunction—which is born of attentive prayer—he knows from experience that precisely in the precious moments of compunction there arise in him thoughts of humble-mindedness that impart the feeling of humility.[4] This takes place especially when compunction is accompanied by tears. The more frequently the times of compunction come, the more frequently the practitioner of prayer becomes a hearer of the mysterious teaching concerning humility, and the more deeply this teaching penetrates into his heart. Constant compunction keeps the soul in constant humility, in the disposition of unceasing prayer and meditation on God. The holy Fathers note that in contrast to vainglory, which scatters a person’s thoughts throughout the world, humility concentrates them within the soul; it leads from fruitless and frivolous contemplation of the whole world to fruitful and deep self-examination, to mental stillness, to that state which true prayer requires and which attentive prayer produces. Finally, the gracious action of humility and the gracious action of prayer are one and the same action, as was said at the beginning of our discourse.[5] This action appears in two persons: in Christ-like humility and in Divine love, which is the highest action of prayer. This action belongs to our Lord Jesus Christ, who dwells and acts through the Holy Spirit—inexpressibly and incomprehensibly—in His chosen vessels. Amen.