217. Mary’s humility
217. MARY’S HUMILITY
Did Mary know she was sinless? Wouldn’t it make one proud, and thus sinful, to know that?
Whether the Annunciation took place in becoming order?
To a humble mind nothing is more astonishing than to hear its own excellence. Now wonder is most effective in drawing the mind’s attention. Therefore the angel, desirous of drawing the Virgin’s attention to the hearing of so great a mystery, began by praising her (III,30,4).
Mary was astonished at the angel’s praise in hailing her as “full of grace”—not because she doubted angels, grace, or miracles, but because she was humble.
Humility is unaware of its own excellence—not because it is deceived, and has an unrealistically low opinion of itself, but because it does not think about itself and its own degree of excellence at all.
If humility were not self-forgetfulness, any virtuous person would have the practical dilemma of either directing his attention to his own virtue, which naturally leads to pride, or denying it, which would be a lie. Or, to put the same point in a trilemma instead of a dilemma, if we insist on judging ourselves and our level of virtue, we must either (1) think we are very good, and become proud, or (2) think we are very bad, and despair, or (3) think we are average, and be bored and wishy-washy.
The solution is to deny the common assumption of all three, that we must judge ourselves. It is God Who judges all men, both ourselves and our neighbors. (See 1 Cor 4:3.) We are to keep our eyes on Him (and on our neighbors’ needs) rather than on ourselves. “Ingrown eyeballs” are a spiritual disease. God made eyes to see everything but themselves. (Although we do need occasionally to make an “examination of conscience”, mainly to become aware of our sins so that we can confess them and repent of them.)
The very best possible object for our eyes to focus on instead of ourselves is Christ. For Christ is both fully God and fully man. As God, He is total perfection. As man, He is all our neighbors (“As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me”—Mt 25:40). Thus, focusing on Him is the key to obeying the two great commandments. And Mary had Christ to focus on, both physically and spiritually, more totally and intimately than any other human being ever did. He was the key to her humility, and her humility was the key to her sanctity.
Nothing is more practical in the Catholic religion than Mary, because the whole purpose of this religion is what Dietrich von Hildebrand called “Transformation in Christ”, and Mary is our most perfect concrete model and heroine for this summum bonum (“greatest good”), i.e., for “the meaning of life”.