Exercise XXIX: The Transformation of Self-esteem

Evening Preparation.—If I wish to esteem myself properly I must look for those things in myself that come from God, especially in the supernatural order. The great gifts I shall discover will doubtless help me to understand the loftiness of Christian dignity. It will be the highest flight of the tendency that is called self-esteem. I shall then survey without scruple or exaggeration the total sum of God's gifts. If I mount high enough I shall see my personal qualities emanating from Him, all my actions sustained by Him, and the beauty of my soul as a reflection of His own beauty; or rather, I shall cease in a sense to see myself, so much shall I feel myself filled with the divine.

We must bring to this meditation a mind freed from vulgar ideas and disposed to a just admiration, a wide mind that is not hindered by trifling difficulties. We must bring to it, above all, a great spirit of faith.

MEDITATION

PRELUDE.—To ask the grace to understand these truths as if they were presented to me for the first time; to penetrate them, to feel them and to be impressed by them.

I. The gifts of God.—What I am as a human being: the masterpiece of creation; the sovereign ruler of matter; a little world in which the universe is reflected through the medium of the senses, and is transformed in idea through the effort of the intelligence; a kind of heaven where God makes Himself known as an Infinite Being and the Author of all things; moral freedom, by means of which I am master of my actions and of my destiny.

Ah! how familiar all these wonders are to me! We think so little of what we have always known! To admire man needs to be astonished!

But let us remember that one gleam of intelligence is greater than the whole of the starry host of heaven! that an act of the will is a higher force than all the movements of the sea! and that the wonderful instinct of the animal world is of less value than a single thought!

At the same time the lustre of these natural gifts fades before the beauty of the gifts of grace, for these are of such an order that the Almighty could not create a being to whom they were natural as reason is natural to man. Grace can only be a transformation. It is a participation in the Divine nature, with its need of the Infinite and its ability to contemplate It face to face. It is a Divine life in the compass of our rude being, and because it is Divine, a life that God alone can exercise in us; each of our supernatural acts needs His movement both to be born and to endure. Ah! if our eyes should be suddenly opened, we should see this God, the Sovereign Being, in a manner at our service, continually working to deify us. All this is true though it is hidden from us. Oh! to believe it, to believe it enthusiastically!

This at least would be to catch a glimpse of it, and to begin really to know ourselves.

A more tender tie binds me to Jesus. Jesus is my friend, He gives me His Heart and His goods. Jesus is my brother, He has taken my nature. Jesus is something of my own; He is my great glory, or rather, I am something of His and it is my great happiness. I belong to Him like the little cell buried deep in my body which receives its life by the action of my brain; like the little wave of blood that swells the most distant of my arteries, and which comes from my heart; a mysterious union here on earth that will be radiant in heaven; an incomparable title of dignity to those who understand; I am a part of the mystic being of Jesus, I can lessen or increase It; I am necessary to His happiness; I can deceive His hopes. It is given to me either to allow Him to live fully in me, or to prefer to Him, alas! the sorry expansion of my own life by my inordinate pursuit of the pleasures and plaudits of this world.

Dost thou not find, O my soul, that these grandeurs suffice to satisfy thy sense of self-esteem and to establish thy nobility? What nobility more ancient than that which comes from the Eternal? What nobility more illustrious than that which is descended from the Highest?

By Jesus I am the issue of the very blood of God, and my life is nourished by a Divine food. Need I wait for heaven to pride myself in these glories? Heaven will make them shine more brightly, it is true; but grace already enriches me with them. Shall I disdain them because I share them in common with others?

Does the good of others diminish my own good? Far from it; rather it augments it in countless ways, by the examples it affords me, the charitable aids it brings me, and by the special virtues that it calls into play.

II. Humility makes the gifts of God resplendent.— Unbelief is the blindness that surveys creation without discovering God in it. The proud man perhaps sees God in nature, but he does not see Him in himself. He attributes everything he does to himself, and what he is he believes is his own personal character. Most frequently it is not presumption, but unconsciousness.

Such a man injures God not by driving Him away, but by ignoring Him.

In proportion as humility sheds its beautiful light upon this blindness, the evidence of God's action appears, is extended, and finally encroaches upon our whole personality, as the sun on its rising floods the earth with its beams.

Man's greatness here below is to seek God. If he seeks Him in nature, he finds Him everywhere, even in the smallest grain of sand; if he seeks Him in himself, he finds Him in every part of his being and even in the least of his actions. It follows that the humble man does not prefer himself to anyone, and that when he admires anything in himself, in a sense he admires it on his knees.

Formerly the prudence of a great people led them to place behind the throne of a conqueror a herald at arms, whose duty it was constantly to repeat to him this warning: "Remember that thou art a man." These are the words of humility; remember that beneath all these shows of greatness, thou art but a man, a nonentity! Keep thy rank, defend thine honour, take initiatives, insist and fight 'if necessary, but while doing all these lawful things, remember, remember! Never lose sight of the origin of thy gifts; never cease to realise the last end of thine actions.

If self-esteem were simply esteem for the work of God in every man, it would not then be a personal sentiment, but a form of worship. But this esteem regards those gifts as if they were our own, and this is why we need humility, to open our eyes to show us how fragile is our hold of them, and thus to moderate our natural inclination to magnify ourselves on their account. With all her strength she opposes the vain complacency we take in them, and forbids us because of them to feel the least disdain for others.

There is no doubt that rightly to esteem self is a difficult and delicate virtue; without grace it would be unwise to aspire to it. A timid fearfulness most often prompts us to shut our eyes.

This is not wisdom, for danger can be avoided, and a true sense of personal dignity may not find elsewhere such a powerful motive to sustain it. Such a sense bestows a kind of royalty; and this royalty, firmly established in its dominion, expels evil with an instinctive and invincible disdain. In the refinement of its tastes it tends to what is noblest. From the elevation of a throne, what is base and vulgar is detected even before it can approach.

Could we unveil the soul of a Saint, we should find surprise after surprise. The sentiment of self-esteem would appear in splendid growth; the Saints know that they are the Sons of God, participate in His nature, and are future inheritors of His glory.

They are supremely proud of their friendship with Jesus, of the resemblance to Himself that He has implanted in their souls, of the constant action that He exercises in the depths of their being.

These sentiments urge them constantly towards an ever-growing perfection, and their ambition, taking a more than human flight, darts to aspire to increase God Himself by working for His glory. We do not find them timid or hesitating in face of the most difficult enterprises or the most threatening dangers. We see with what an eye they regard the supreme abasement, sin; with what horror its assaults fill them. Seek where we will, nowhere shall we find such a lofty sense of personal dignity, such a sentiment of greatness and of strength; a sentiment at the same time perfectly gentle and peaceful because it is developed in the pure and calm atmosphere of truth, of goodness, and of most excellent beauty.

RESOLUTION. — To admire in myself the gifts of God, in order to give to the sense of personal dignity its highest motive. Not to content myself with a superficial view that teaches nothing and effects nothing.