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When St Paul considers this mystery he too breaks into a joyful hymn which we can savour today word by word: 'Yours is to be the same mind which Christ Jesus showed. Though being by nature God, he did not consider being equal to God a thing to be coveted,' (for he was God by essence) 'but emptied himself, and took the nature of a slave, fashioned in the likeness of men, presenting himself to us in human form; and then he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to death on a cross.'

In his preaching, Our Lord Jesus Christ very often sets before our eyes the example of his own humility. 'Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart,' so that you and I may know that there is no other way, and that only our sincere recognition of our nothingness is powerful enough to draw divine grace towards us. St Augustine says: 'It was for us that Jesus came to suffer hunger and to be our food, to suffer thirst and to be our drink, to be clothed with our mortality and to clothe us with immortality, to be poor so as to make us rich.'

This point in another language