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22nd
Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle C
Dominican
Retreat House
August 31, September 1, 2013
Learning Humility
(Rev. Msgr.) Nicholas P. Amato
All Quiet on the Western Front
In 1930, a German
author named Erich Remarque wrote a novel called All Quiet on the Western
Front.
It was novel later
made into a move about World War I and has become a classic both in literature
and cinema. We might recall that World
War I was mostly trench warfare in Europe, 100 years ago.
In All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer,
a 19-year-old German soldier huddles in a large hole made by an exploded bombshell. Suddenly, a French soldier jumps into the
hole.
Instinctively,
Baumer stabs the Frenchman, his enemy, with a dagger. Very quickly Baumer learns from the bleeding
soldier that his name is Duval that he is a husband and a father, and that has
been working as a printer.
Soon the wounded
Duval dies, propped up against Baumer.
And it is then, with the realization of what he has done, that Baumer
speaks to the dead Duval.
“Comrade, I did not want to kill you. If you jumped in here again, I would not do
it, if you would be sensible too.
“But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction
that lived in my mind and called for its appropriate response. It was that abstraction that I stabbed.
“But now, for the fist time, I see you are a man like
me. I thought of your hand grenades, of
your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your life and your face and our
fellowship.
“Forgive me, comrade.
We always see it too late.
“Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like
us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same
fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony –
“Forgive me, comrade, how could you be my enemy? If we threw away these rifles and these
uniforms you could be my brother…
“Take twenty years of my life, comrade, and stand up –
take more, for I do not know what I can even attempt to do with it now.”
Jesus and Humility
I find that excerpt
from the novel very moving and the words of the German soldier, Baumer, so
responsive to Jesus’ insight today. “Those
who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Jesus calls us to
embrace humility, a humble way of being and living. I believe we see the essence of humility in
the thoughts of the German soldier.
The Heart of Humility
Humility is not
seeing others as an abstraction or an idea in my mind or an impersonal
demographic.
It is not seeing and
summing up a person as just part of a category, a race, a nationality, a religion,
a political persuasion, or a gender orientation. Instead, it is seeing others – in fact, each
person – as God sees them.
Humility is
realizing that we share with every human being the dignity of being made in the
image and likeness of God. It is the
awareness that we are all basically one – seeking self-worth, a sense of
purpose, fulfillment, life’s necessities, maybe a few comforts, and
opportunities for our children.
Humility is being
aware that we and Blacks in Washington, Hispanics immigrants in the County, the
citizens of China, Viet Nam, Iran or Kenya – we are all basically the
same. It means that we see them as God
sees them.
Humility is not a
groveling or a diminishment of myself, not at all! It is a sensitive respect for the other as I
respect myself.
In fact, what does
Jesus say? “Those who humble themselves
will be exalted.”
So, if we are
humble, we end up not being diminished but being “exalted” – becoming fuller
and more alive persons. And if we are
humble, we also enable others to become fuller and more alive persons.
Choosing not to be humble,
we end up diminishing and even killing the life of others, as the soldier
Baumer realized, he’d done. And in so
doing, we disconnect ourselves from others, and thus we shrink as persons; we
diminish and even kill off our own lives.
Conclusion
So that is what humility is and does and what its absence
is and does. This is the virtue Jesus
calls us to embrace today.
