“They pour out arrogant words; all the evildoers are full of boasting” (Psalm 94:4).
Years ago, I heard someone recount a vision attributed to Anthony the Great. He was shown the devious ways in which people at the end of the world would be deceived by the evil one and led toward ruin. Confronted with traps that seemed insurmountable, he asked how anyone could still be saved. The answer came swiftly and succinctly: “Humility! Humility!”
I often wondered what humility actually means in practical terms, and what its true effect might be, if this virtue were to prove vital—decisive even—for our eternal destiny. Until then, it had seemed to me a rather isolated quality, with an outdated air, more like the crowning virtue of hermits. The answer to which God gradually led me was so beneficial and enlightening that it changed my entire perspective on the life of faith. I came to understand that humility helps us in two ways.
First, humility serves as a safeguard against error—a virtue that cannot be absent from anyone who loves and fears God. It must be cultivated; it does not arise on its own, since human nature is constantly drawn toward worldly things, and the worldly spirit is never humble. A continual and vigilant struggle with ourselves is therefore necessary.
The second way in which humility helps us is by enabling discernment in the world around us, helping us distinguish between what is worth following and what must be avoided. Scripture issues a clear warning: “God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble” (1 Peter 5:5).
The opposite of humility is pride and arrogance, and this was the first sin—older even than the original sin in Eden. It was Lucifer’s fall from heaven, born of the delusion that he was greater and other than he truly was: the impulse to rebel, to accuse, to rage, to envy, to hate, to make deceitful claims, and to scheme maliciously in order to seize what was not rightfully his, through injustice, abuse, force, and deception. All evils flow from pride, which has been the Luciferian mark from that moment until the end, upon all creatures who go astray. Pride distorts an individual’s character and can be observed in any unfit leader in public life. This is the deeper sense in which Jesus taught us to recognise “wolves in sheep’s clothing” by their fruits—their deeds, gestures, actions, and attitudes.
Humility, by contrast, is the defining mark of those who are children of God, whether human or angelic. In our own lives and in the world we inhabit, every proposal involving free choice, every challenge that calls for a decision, and every possible course of action can be examined spiritually by the mark it bears. This is the second, revealing way in which the lesson of humility helps to safeguard the soul.
