A Reflection from “Meditations on Humility” by Fr. St. Francis Borgia

You ought, O devout soul, to make yourself as familiar as you possibly can with these exercises in order that your actions, which are sterile and imperfect in themselves, may become holy and salutary, and that they may merit to be presented to God as an agreeable sacrifice. You should commence by the ordinary actions of each day, which are common to all; and I can assure you that if you are faithful to this practice, besides acquiring, by degrees, a great facility for acting holily in all the other circumstances of life, you will find in it wondrous sweetness and consolation.

Now this practice consists in having three motives in each action that you perform: first, to humble yourself before God; second, to thank Him for His graces; and third, to ask Him for those of which you have need.

While Dressing in the Morning

1. Enter into a profound sentiment of humility in considering that you are well clothed and that Jesus Christ was fastened naked to a Cross for love of you.

2. Thank Him for having assumed our nature, although He knew at the time how ungrateful we should be for this favor; and also for having given us clothes to cover us, although we have so often despised the nuptial robe of grace with which He clothed us.

3. While dressing yourself, you are performing one of the works of mercy, which is to clothe the naked: implore Him to accept this action in consideration of the garment of ignominy with which He was covered in the palace of Herod.

On Entering a Church

1. Humble yourself in considering how unworthy your imperfections render you to enter the house of God, where He is adored by angels with so much awe and purity.

2. Thank Him that, after having so often strayed far from Him, owing to the enormity of your sins, He is well pleased to receive you into His house; that He even seeks for you and begs you to enter.

3. Ask Him for the grace to offer yourself to Him with the same love with which the Blessed Virgin presented her Son in the Temple; with the desire of becoming yourself a temple of God, in which the Holy Spirit may dwell.

When Beginning to Pray

1. Humble yourself before God, repeating the words of the publican, “O God, be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:13), and reflect on the multitude of your sins.

2. Return thanks to Jesus Christ for having vouchsafed to pray for you, in order that your petitions may be granted by the merit of His prayer.

3. Beseech Him, by the merit of the prayer that He offered up for all sinners in the desert, to grant you the graces that He has Himself ordered you to ask from Him in the Lord’s Prayer, which you should recite once with great attention and devotion.

On Assisting at Mass

1. Reflect humbly with how little devotion you come to see and adore your God. Reproach yourself that the continuation of so great a benefit is the cause of the light esteem in which you hold it, instead of the cause, as it ought to be, of an increase in your respect and love; since God renders His favors so common only to make better known the great charity that He has for you.

2. Thank Him for making you resemble the angels each time you adore Him with true faith: for these blessed spirits are always employed in His presence, praising and glorifying Him unceasingly.

3. Since this sacrifice is offered to God in memory of the sacrifice of Calvary, ask of Him, through the merits of His precious Blood, the grace to cleanse yourself in it from all your sins and to efface them by the abundance of your tears, that the old man may die within you and the new man live therein.

During Lunch

1. Humble yourself for having betrayed Him who gives you food and for being so ungrateful for the benefits that you have received.

2. Thank Him for having so long preserved you and for having nourished you with so much care, even when you were His enemy.

3. Beg Him, by the charity with which He fed so great a multitude in the desert, to give you the celestial nourishment of His grace, and that this may be your daily bread.

When Performing Some Act of Charity

1. Humble yourself that having so often contributed to the disedification of your neighbor by your bad example, God is yet pleased to make use of you in an affair so important as that of the salvation of others. To effect that salvation, He sent His beloved Son into this world.

2. Thank Him that, being in want of nothing, He nevertheless accepts the little good that you do for Him, as though you were necessary to Him.

3. Implore Him by that charity with which He said that His business was to employ Himself in the service and glory of His Father, that He will give you the grace to occupy yourself only in holy actions, in order that they may serve for the advancement of His glory.

At Evening Prayer

1. Consider that you speak to a God before whom the angels tremble with awe and fear.

2. Thank Him for having given you the courage to pray to Him by a commandment full of goodness and mercy.

3. Entreat Him, by that same resignation that caused Him to sweat drops of Blood in the Garden of Olives and made Him say, “My Father . . . not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matt. 26:39), to give you the grace to be always perfectly united to His holy will, in life and in death.

+