I heard a priest say once that if a person is truly humble, they would not know it, and the moment they realized that they were humble, is the moment they no longer were.

Then how is it possible to try to be humble without knowing you're trying to be??   :confused1:What a paradox!! :shocked:

Teresa

Quote from: Elizabeth

Quote from: St Jude Thaddeus

Quote from: Catholic Martyr

SJT has put it quite well.

Only because God Almighty saw fit to help me express myself clearly, CM!

You know, I lived in a remote rural area of a "Third World" majority Catholic country for fifteen years. There were some very old-fashioned people up there in those mountains that never heard of Vatican 2 or PC speech or "self-esteem" or any of this modern nonsense. For all they knew, the French Revolution had never happened, Franco was still president of Spain, and the transistor radio was a newfangled contraption. Anyway, if you ever complemented them on something, for absolutely anything at all, even just for doing a good job of sewing a button back on or frying up a chicken, they would dip their head, look at their feet, and say, "Thanks be to God," or "By the goodness of the Lord," or something similar. Even though I was young then and very full of myself (and a few other things as well) I could recognize true faith and humility when I saw it.

Beautiful, and thank you for this.

This was in a remote corner of Central America more than twenty years ago. In the mid-90's electricity arrived and shortly thereafter, cable TV. At the same time the country was making a feeble attempt to industrialize via sweatshops and service jobs, and ambitious young people began to leave those villages in search of the "good life" in the big city. The government stifled agriculture and promoted public education and evangelical crusades by big American megachurches.

The results were quite predictable. Those humble and faithful Catholics have been replaced by poverty-stricken farmers, angry unemployed youths and drug traffickers who grabbed up cheap farmland by the hundreds of acres. Every small town now has one aging Catholic church (serviced by 0.25 priests) and half a dozen "temples" blasting "praise and worship" music through loudspeakers day and night. Young people who before were busy learning a trade or preparing to take over a piece of the family farm now sit around watching MTV Latino and HBO and smoking ganja. It's like a Hillaire Belloc scenario in reverse.

By the sound of it, it seems like this was some sort of US/UN government program to modernize those who are living "behind the times" or in "desperation." The end result is usually the emergence of liberal values. Its so sad. A similar thing happened in Europe after WWII.

 And the sure sign of non-humility:

 When one read's you're post and says "that's me!" to every 'point' you attempted to make.

 I believe St. Teresa said int he Interior Castle that one must be very careful not to say one has made it to this chamber or that, for when we are so certain, we most certainly fall back all the way down.