Justin Appel

Dear Friends,

Today's reading from Philippians 2:1-11, is all about Christ's humility and obedience. St. Paul also abjures his readers (including us) to have humility, and to think of others as better than us (v. 3).

I don't know that I have much of use to say about humility from my own experience, but I will try to communicate something. In the first place, the notion has been growing within me for some time that humility means understanding myself with a certain accuracy. This has a negative aspect, an series of apophatic realities, if you like. On the one hand, I am increasingly aware that I am not simply identifiable as the sum of my skills or abilities. On the other hand, neither am I simply the same thing as my sins -- and this is a particular temptation. But rather, humility involves an acceptance of who God has made me to be: a marvelous, holy person.

Quite frankly, this has been a difficult truth to grasp, let alone believe. It may sound like the pinnacle of hubris to say it. However, I do think that the Christian tradition teaches this truth quite clearly: that we are made to be holy people, saints.

But there's the rub. If God desires and intends for you and I to become saintly, transparent people -- I am acutely aware of my failures to achieve that holiness. This awareness comes in mysterious forms sometimes, and I increasingly have come to identify humility with this realization. Namely, when I fail to be the person God has created me to become, I let down the people around me and even potentially jeopardize their path to God.

Please don't misunderstand me. I don't simply mean the breaking of particular rules or moral codes. By 'sin', I simply refer to the times -- God forgive me, the many times -- I have turned my back on God, and done so willingly. When I turn from God, I sink down, and I take those around me down too.

This is a terrifying realization, in a sense. But then it does justice to the reality of who we are as God's creature. We are made for greatness, for truly astounding greatness, even though fully human. We see the essence of this when we look at Christ, who humbled himself, though he was 'in the form of God'. We identify in a way with this, because we are made as icons of Christ, and stamped with the very image of God. We are made with this image imprinted upon us, and we have the freedom to either struggle into our identity or to efface it.

When one realizes this -- both the staggering possibility of becoming God's beloved creature fully realized, and of the all-too real eventuality that I could lose my way and drag those around me away from God, this becomes a kind of foundation for humility. How can I possibly judge another human being? How can a set my own standard against those who differ from me? My basic work lies not in evaluating others, but rather in the all-consuming task of facing God, of looking within myself and of receiving the healing I so desperately need.

This notion of humility and potentiality relates to what Saint Seraphim of Sarov famously said: 'Acquire a peaceful spirit, and then thousands around you will be saved.'

Yours in Christ,
Justin