De Humilitate Et Obedientia Et De Calcanda Superbia

In an uncertain year of the Lord. Novatus Catholicus. The Opinion of Novatus on Humility and Obedience and on Trampling Pride. To the secular we speak one way in the Church, to you we must speak another. To them we sometimes speak things that have sound but not substance, for they delight, like the weak, in the sounds of words, not in the power of God. But you, in the name of Christ, do not delight in this; rather, you wish to hear the word of salvation, to which you have been called; and you have put on these mourning garments in the world, awaiting better ones with God. You already know and have wisdom. You have long had here one against whom your struggle lies; your adversary is not outside, but is within, in your very bowels; and in our own members we have an opponent. For if the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, so that we do not do what we wish (Galatians 5:17), you see that this adversary is within. But this adversary is not conquered except by humility and charity; for our Lord Jesus Christ himself would not have conquered the devil had he not been humbled; and he was humbled not of necessity, but of charity. For if he had not loved, he would not have become humble. Out of love for us he became humble. Therefore, if he who made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them (Psalm 146), the Lord of all angels, who created everything, became humble for our sake, why do we refuse humility for our own sake?

Therefore, the path of salvation is not open to us unless we are humbled. When you begin to practice humility, seek it for the sake of God and endure it for the sake of the community itself. And in that community, although you are equals, each one ought to consider another as superior to himself, even if he is not superior. Only one who has humility does this. No other reward is necessary for the servants of God except humility, because humility, if it exists in a person, makes him obedient. But one who is obedient, or who pursues obedience, does not obey men, but God. For thus the Lord says: "He who hears you hears me; he who hears me hears him who sent me" (Luke 10:16). The Abbot is the Father; the following brothers are the Patriarchs. And whoever else among you who perhaps has a good life, better continence, better vigils, better custody of the body, he too, by reason of imitation, is a Father. Therefore, act among yourselves so that you first preserve humility, not that you may seem humble to men, but to God. That is true humility, which is demonstrated to God, not to men. For humility that is shown to men is pretense, not humility, which ought to be entirely foreign to the servants of God. I do not, indeed, think that there are such among you; but I warn you lest such a disease creep in. For we are men, and we speak to men.

Therefore, you must first show humility to your brothers for the sake of imitation, so that humility itself may be founded within the heart according to God. For when humility has been founded in your heart for the sake of God, then God gives to him, that is, to your brother, that he may understand and imitate your humility. For if humility has not been founded in your heart, God shows your brother that your humility is feigned. Therefore, the first path of salvation is this: to hold to simple humility for the sake of God, not for the sake of man; not to please men thereby, but to please God thereby. Let obedience follow humility, and obey yourselves, just as the members obey one another. Do the members obey by deliberation, and not by natural charity? If the foot stumbles, does not the hand run, lest the whole body be harmed and fall? As the Apostle says: If one member suffers, all the members suffer together (1 Cor. 12). Whence, then, if not from charity? Therefore, if you love one another, there will be no disturbance. Let no one suffer scandals; not on account of food, not on account of drink, not on account of clothing, not on account of vigils, not on account of labors, not on account of the kitchen, not on account of ministry. Now, when you have loved one another, if someone does something that he ought not, that charity does not permit you to take offense.

Therefore, brothers, have humility and obedience, which peace follows, so that you may be sons of peace: because charity, as the Apostle says, is the bond of perfection (Col. 3:14). When someone has humility, he imitates Christ, who became humble for our sake. When someone has obedience, he imitates Christ, who became obedient unto death (Phil. 2:8). When someone has charity, he imitates Christ: because God is charity (1 John 4:16). But first strive to conquer your vices within. Let peace first be made between the soul and heart with the commandment of God; so that against the habit and frailty of the body there may be two victors: the commandment of God and your consent. For the case is such: the physician, the sick man, and the sickness. If the sick man sides with the sickness, the physician is overcome; two become one against one, and the physician is defeated. Therefore, if the sick man sides with the physician, the infirmity is overcome. The physician is Christ; we are the sick; the disease of sickness is the habit of sin. Now he who has partially renounced the world, although he lives in the world, should attend to where he ought to cleave: whether to the disease or to the physician. If he does not cleave to the physician, the physician labors. Therefore the Gospel cries out to us in the world and says: Be consenting to your adversary quickly, while you are with him on the road (Matt. 5:25).

It does not teach us to be compliant with the adversary devil; but it teaches us to be compliant with the adversary, the divine precept, which opposes our evils, and opposes our habit, opposes our iniquities. If we comply, we are made concordant with the precept of God, and we receive, as it were, the yoke of God; on account of which the Lord says: Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you. Take up my yoke, because it is light, and my burden is light (Matt. 11:28). Behold, what is so light? Finally, consider how those who have something in this world fear that it may be snatched away. How they fear that they may lose what they have acquired! By what means are they tormented, as if under a very heavy weight of anxiety? You, however, labor at nothing else but to do what the abbot commands. You are already under the yoke: you do not think about where you live, because you ought not to think. There is one who rules you: there is one who bears care for you. Thought of food and clothing ought not to pertain to you at all. Whatever the abbot gives, consider it as if God gave it: that is true humility. But perhaps one has more, and another less; and hold this as if done by God. But one sits at another table; if the abbot so orders, if he has so approved, hold it as if God commanded. I do not want you to interpose yourself there, so that you say: tomorrow I will sit there. I do not want you to form the habit of giving yourself that necessity.

If by chance there is nothing to give, or it does not seem fitting to give, consider it thus: either because there is nothing to give, or because it has seemed inexpedient to give it. These things, brothers, if you keep them, you will surely have eternal life. Do not allow yourselves to be led by evil words. If by chance some weak brother falls, so that he speaks perversely, immediately restrain him; immediately say: Do not do that, do not, brother, you are sinning. For you ought, by reason of your being gathered together and having one abbot, to be abbots to yourselves. Does not one man, because he has two eyes and two ears, have the power to hear all or see all? Or does he not have the necessity to go out somewhere and provide for something? Be abbots to yourselves; and just as you feared the abbot when present, fear him also when absent, because God is present. Fear this entirely, dread this, because God is always present. And if one man bears care for so many, how much more ought you all to bear it, lest he find cause to be angered, to grieve, to be offended, to groan, to think that the labor of his long time will perish? For these things will be able to benefit us then, if we have humility, obedience, and charity. There is no other way to God except humility, obedience, and charity. He himself is the way, the truth, and the life.

For they are tormented, they fast for two, three, four days, they frequently observe weeks, and from this the brothers grow proud, thinking that what they themselves do, another cannot do: they consider it infinite that another cannot do it: or one walks barefoot, and judges that he alone can do this: or perhaps he neither drinks nor even mixed water; it is a temporary exercise, because he cannot always do it. But let him rather think of humility, think of piety, charity, obedience. For the sake of breaking the body’s strength, for the sake of taming the blood and the flesh, he ought to undertake these things as a good athlete; but let him not boast of them, lest he lose what he has done. For that Pharisee who went up into the temple to pray—were the works he counted small? They were immense: to fast twice on the Sabbath; to give tithes of all his goods to the poor; to commit no fraud; to commit no adultery—this is infinite: but because he vaunted it in pride, everything he did was pride (Luke 18 and following). Therefore David says: Let not the foot of pride come to me, and let not the hand of the sinner move me. There all who work iniquity have fallen (Psalm 35:12). Where have they fallen? Into the fall of pride. For from there the devil fell, he fell through pride. Therefore pride is absolutely not to be admitted among the servants of God. Whoever therefore already lives otherwise, and has better established his life, let him not be like that Pharisee.

But the publican, humbled, does not dare to lift even his eyes to heaven, and, commended by the Lord’s judgment, returns to his home more justified than that Pharisee. For we have experience, both in the holy Scriptures themselves and in our own brothers, that whoever has kept to the path of humility advances and does not perish.