Humility: A Small, Quiet Thunder—Catholic and Countercultural
There is something ancient and unspeakably beautiful in humility, a low running river on which so many unseen saints and sinners sail, battered and battered again by the winds of the age and the small, shrill urgings of their hearts. Imagine: in a world addicted to boasting and pixel-perfect self-presentation, the Catholic Church obstinately whispers, again and again, about a King who kneels to wash feet, a God who sidesteps glory for a stable’s straw. This is, in the words of the poet, “an unbearable goodness, quiet as a psalm in the long cold night.” So let’s talk about humility. Let’s let it breathe, like sacramental wine in a battered cup. Let’s murmur, stutter, even stammer about a virtue the world mostly forgets yet can’t quite live without.
The Catholic imagination treasures humility as the soil out of which blooms every possible holiness. “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit,” urges Saint Paul in his letter to the Philippians, “but in humility value others above yourselves” (Philippians 2:3, New Revised Standard Version). Paul’s vision sharpens further, sketching Christ “who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave” (Philippians 2:6–7). Here is the core: humility is not feverish self-loathing or a gloomy shrinking away from one’s gifts. Rather, it is radical truthfulness, the willingness to be small before God and before others, neither puffed up nor shrunken, simply real, unsheltered, uncloaked.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church underscores humility as “the foundation of prayer,” for it is only the humble heart that enters, unafraid and unadorned, before the Father’s love (Catechism, 2559). Saint Augustine mused that “it was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels.” Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, patroness of little souls, saw humility as the most ordinary, necessary path to God—her “Little Way” was to accept one’s limitations and trust entirely in God’s mercy. And as for Saint Benedict, his Rule famously opens with the command, “Listen with the ear of your heart”—because listening, true vulnerable attention, is the beautiful work of the humble.
Humility, then, is not a solitary jewel but the stem from which charity, obedience, and faith unfurl. Charity—the love that does not count the cost—grows only where humility has cleared away the brambles of ego and self-concern. Obedience, in its Catholic fullness, is not mere compliance but the joyful alignment of the will to something or Someone greater. And faith, always, is the letting go of self-reliance and an awkward tiptoe into reliance on the wild-hearted mercy of God.
But, friend—oh friend!—what a crush of noise against humility these days! The culture hums with hashtags and highlight reels. Social media, with its ceaseless self-curating, teaches even small children that value equates to visible approval: likes, shares, applause echoing through the wires. Consumerism, meanwhile, urges the construction of identity from what can be purchased or posted, not what has been quietly suffered and transformed. The culture of self-promotion asks not, “Am I giving?” but “Am I being seen?” Here humility appears not as strength but as a lack of ambition, even a flaw.
Consider, for example, the “influencer economy” where self-branding becomes a moral pursuit, or the workplace worship of the “disruptive leader,” celebrated less for teamwork than for visible assertion. Children (and more than a few adults) now grow up learning to cultivate image over presence, and comparison over acceptance.
Even acts of service—God’s chosen path for humility—are often filtered through phones, hashtagged, made public so all may see our goodness. That pained yearning for esteem, so evocatively named in the ancient Litany of Humility—“From the desire of being praised… Deliver me, Jesus”—has mutated, perhaps, but it has not diminished.
But humility insists on the goodness of the small, the ordinary, the hidden. The practice of humility is no abstract exercise, but a practice—a habit of bending both knee and will.
In prayer, to let words fail and listen, simply listen, as Saint Benedict commands.
In the family, to forgive quickly and admit wrongs, especially the small invisible ones that fester unless exposed to the light.
In the parish, to take up the forgotten jobs—washing dishes after coffee hour, folding the bulletins, tending the dying plants.
In the school, to let others speak first, to ask questions that admit ignorance, to labor on behalf of students or colleagues who may never know our names.
Liturgical life shapes us into humility not by accident, but by design. To kneel, to confess, to exchange the sign of peace, and, above all, to take the Bread that is not earned but given, remembering always the Lord who “emptied himself” so that we might be filled with mercy. As Father George McInnis reflects, “The rivers of grace cannot flow uphill, up the steep cliff of the proud man’s heart.” Humility is gravity for the soul, guiding grace toward us who are not self-sufficient reservoirs but longing dry land.
Service, in all its rough and awkward forms, resets the compass. The humble wipe tables, visit the sick, and carry small sorrows for their friends. The Litany of Humility’s rolling mantras—“That others may be chosen and I set aside… That others may be praised and I unnoticed…”—become, with practice, not wounds but wounds transfigured, healed into freedom.
To say humility is for the weak has always profoundly misunderstood the Gospel’s wild inversion. Humility is the quiet thunder that cracks open hearts. In a society fracturing and fragmenting on the rocks of self-will, humility is not just a balm but a revolution.
Spiritually, humility unlocks receptivity; the “rivers of grace” must run downward, not upward, and “the proud man’s heart” is a cliff they cannot climb. Loss of interior peace, as McInnis sharply observes, is always a symptom that pride is gnawing from within. The church, the school, the quiet forged communion of forgiveness, are all impossible without the slow, sweet, painful work of humility.
Leadership—real, sacramental leadership—comes not from domination but from that Eucharistic logic, the willingness to serve first and be unseen. The parish, the family, the Catholic school find new fruitfulness when leaders stoop, listen, make space for the littlest and lost. Humility heals because humility creates community—drawing the circle wide, blessing the ones who arrive late, the ones seated at the far edge of the feast.
In a wounded and cacophonous world, humility is the backdoor into holiness, a “radical and countercultural path to authentic human flourishing and holiness.” If it is true—if it is really true—that the blessed are “meek and lowly of heart,” then we are invited to slip off our armor of self-importance and come to Christ as we are: a little cracked, a little tired, and very much in need of mercy.
References
Catechism of the Catholic Church, §2559
The Holy Bible, New Revised Standard Version, Philippians 2:3-8
Augustine of Hippo. (1991). The Confessions. (H. Chadwick, Trans.). Oxford University Press.
Chittister, J. (2011). The Rule of Benedict: A Spirituality for the 21st Century. Crossroad Publishing Company.
McInnis, G. (2025). On Humility. Fathers of Mercy.
"Litany of Humility." (n.d.)
Rose, P. (2018). Social Media, Individualism, and Virtue. Journal of Communication and Religion, 41(2), 22-35.
Thérèse of Lisieux. (1997). Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. ICS Publications.
Benedict of Nursia. (2007). The Rule of Saint Benedict. Vintage Spiritual Classics.
The drumbeat of humility is not loud; it is more like the soft, insistent heartbeat of the Church Herself, quietly summoning a world both hungry and afraid to the real feast. Steep and small is the road, but broad as heaven’s open palm. Deliver us, Jesus. Grant us the grace to desire it. Amen.
