List of points

Let us consider for a moment the texts of today's Mass, Tuesday in Passion Week, for they will help us to distinguish 'true godliness' from 'false godliness'.** We shall be speaking about humility, for this is the virtue which helps us to recognise, at one and the same time, both our wretchedness and our greatness.

Our wretchedness is all too evident. I am not here referring to our natural limitations, to those great ambitions that people dream of but, in fact, never achieve, if only for lack of time. I am thinking rather of the things we do badly, of our falls, of the mistakes that could have been avoided and were not. We are continually experiencing our personal inadequacies. Moreover, there are times when it seems as if all our failings come together, as if wanting to show themselves more clearly, to make us realise just how little we are worth. When that happens, what are we to do?

Expecta Dominum, hope in the Lord. Live by hope, full of faith and love, the Church says to us. Viriliter age, be of good heart. What does it matter that we are made of clay, if all our hope is placed in God? And if at a certain moment you should fall or suffer some setback (not that it has to happen), all you have to do is to apply the remedy, just as, in the normal course of events, you would do for the sake of your bodily health. And then: off to a fresh start!

'God resists the proud, but gives his grace to the humble,' the apostle St Peter teaches. In any age, in any human setting, there is no other way, to live a godly life, than that of humility. Does this mean that God takes pleasure in our humiliation? Not at all. What would he, who created all things and governs them and maintains them in existence, gain from our prostration? God only wants us to be humble and to empty ourselves, so that he can fill us. He wants us not to put obstacles in his way so that — humanly speaking — there will be more room for his grace in our poor hearts. For the God who inspires us to be humble is the same God who 'will refashion the body of our lowliness, conforming it to the body of his glory, by exerting the power by which he is able also to subject all things to himself'. Our Lord makes us his own, he makes us divine with a 'true godliness'.

'Rescue me from what is deceitful and impious in man.' Once again the text of the Mass brings us to 'true godliness'. It sets before our eyes the poor material of which we are made and all our evil inclinations. And then it begs God: emitte lucem tuam, send forth your light and your truth, which have led me and brought me to your holy mountain. I don't mind telling you that I have been deeply moved while praying these words of the Gradual.

How then are we to behave in order to acquire this 'true godliness'? In the Gospel we read that Jesus 'did not wish to go about in Judea because the Jews were seeking to put him to death'. He, who could have eliminated his enemies with a simple desire of his will, also used human means. He, who was God and could change circumstances with a mere wish, has left us a marvellous lesson here: he did not go to Judea. 'His brethren said to him, "Leave here and go to Judea that your disciples also may see the works that you do."' They would have him do something spectacular. Do you see? Do you see that this is a lesson in 'true godliness' and 'false godliness'?

'True godliness'. Today's Offertory prayer proclaims: 'all who know thy name, O Lord, hope in thee, for you forsake not those who seek thee'. And we who are but mended vessels of clay rejoice, 'for he has not forgotten the prayers of the poor in spirit', the prayers of the humble.

We have only to consider a few traits of God's Love made flesh and our souls are touched by his generosity; they are set on fire and feel gently impelled to contrition for having been petty and selfish on so many occasions. Jesus does not mind lowering himself in order to raise us from our destitution to the dignity of being children of God and brothers of his. You and I, unlike him, often pride ourselves stupidly on the gifts and talents we have received, to the point of making them a pedestal from which to impose our will on others, as if the merits of our few relatively successful efforts derived from ourselves alone. 'What do you have that you have not received from God? And if what you have, you have received, why do you boast as if you had not received it?'

When we think of God's self-giving and the way he humbled himself — I am saying this so that each one of us can meditate on it and apply it to himself — then the vainglory and presumption of the proud man stands out as a truly hideous sin, for the very reason that such conduct is poles apart from the model given us by Jesus Christ. Think about it slowly: He, being God, humiliated himself; man, puffed up with self-love, tries to build himself up at any cost, without recognising that he is but a creature of clay, and poor clay at that.