Thus does Christ call on us to step down from the natural position in which God has installed us. Humility certainly means the habit of living in the truth; beyond that, however, it means an active gesture of quitting the status that is our natural due, a step towards reducing ourselves to naught. It constitutes a specific element in the imitation of Christ.

Here the deep connection between humility and charity manifests itself. In its deepest roots, humility is a fruit of charity; it is our love of Christ that makes us will to “die” so that He may live in us and again inspires our readiness to serve all men, because He has said: “What you do to the least of my brethren, you have done it to me.”

Such alone as have absorbed the spirit of these words of the Lord: “Even as the Son of man is not come to be ministered unto, but to minister” (Matt. 20:28)—such hearts alone as have been wounded to the core by this descent of love “unto the end,” may acquire the humility that has filled the saints; the humility that made every insult, every injustice, every humiliation taste sweet to them; that caused them permanently to undergo the process of self-surrender and self-humiliation, and stirred up in their souls the fire of an unlimited readiness to serve. Christian humility proper encloses the mystery of an inward descent down to the abyss of nothingness, so that God may be “all in all” within us.

Humility confers beauty on the souls of the humble

He who lives in humility deliberately assigns to himself a place even beneath the one which he can naturally claim. He is like the guest to whom the Lord has said, “Friend, rise higher.” Humility, therefore, is not only a presupposition for the genuineness and truth of all our virtues, but is the central condition of our transformation and regeneration in Christ. Moreover, it embodies a high value in itself, conferring on man a unique kind of beauty.