Docility and the School of Life

As some may have picked up from several of my more recent blog postings, I have been particularly struck of late by the virtue of humility. This is not to say that I have been particularly adept at practicing this virtue, but rather it has stood out in my mind over the past several weeks as a goal worthy of a renewed effort. My efforts have been successful at times, and utterly disastrous at others, but through it all Our Lord has been there, whether I have seen Him or not. He has been behind every lesson, every curve ball that life has thrown my way as I try to give up myself, and His Presence has been most reassuring.

But as I was meditating on humility this morning, I was struck by another one of its beautiful aspects: it leads to docility. Often times these two virtues, docility and humility, are equated with one another. For many, they are simply synonymous. There is a real difference, though, between them. Humility is primarily an abandonment of all false notions of grandeur about oneself. It is a recognition of reality, of realizing how low we truly are. To gain humility, we must break through the false notions regarding our own goodness and recognize things as they are. When we become humble, we will see ourselves as good in as far as we are in the image and likeness of God, but we will also begin to see how weak our sins, our failings have made us. We will see how we are in need of God's mercy.

Docility, on the other hand, is primarily a willingness to be taught. It is the virtue by which we are made into good students of man and God. It is that quality by which we accept instruction and correction so as to come to further knowledge. The student who is not docile to his teacher is often rebellious because he believes he is self-sufficient for attaining knowledge. He would rather believe that he already knows everything rather than submit to someone else and learn from them. The docile student, though, will seek after the truth no matter whether it comes from his own abilities of discovery or from the knowledge already possessed by a teacher. For one who is docile, the truth is all that matters, not how he comes to know it. So, he will recognize that there are those around him who have attained to some knowledge of the truth, and he will be willing to submit to their instruction so as to gain a glimpse for himself.

Docility, then, is rooted in the valuation of truth above pride. Thus, before one can be docile, one must be humble. If we are to be prideful and stoke the fires of our own self-worth, we will find that we will not be willing to listen to anyone else. Using hyperbole, the sentiment of the proud student is expressed thus: "Why would I need to listen to anybody else? I am so great and wonderful that I can find truth all on my own." Now, very few people think these exact words, but there are many people who act as if this is what they think. For example, many go about scoffing at tradition (which is only another kind of teacher) while claiming they know better than everyone who came before. These are often the people that think being "medieval" is a thoroughly bad thing. They have a pride rooted in "time-ism" which is similar to racism; it is the unjust and unfair bias against someone else based on an inconsequential circumstance, namely that we have been born after those who came before.

With humility, though, we gain the ability to listen to others, including those who came before. When we are not the source of all truth, when we recognize our littleness, then we can listen to others. In particular, we begin to become docile to the lessons God seeks to teach us through our own lives. Without humility, curve balls and unexpected events in our lives become burdens. If we are constantly seeking, in our pride, to be in control of all that happens to us we'll find such unexpected events burdensome. We'll be aggravated that this or that is happening. We'll mutter saying, "Why did they ask ME this? Or why did this happen to ME?"

But if we're humble, if we're truly being docile to the teachings of Jesus, we'll find that these unexpected events are opportunities to learn. They are opportunities for Christ to expand us, to take us out of our comfort zone, to draw us to rely on Him more and more. They further our humility and docility, so that we begin to learn from all the daily circumstances of our lives. The unexpected event can help teach us how all of our experience is a lesson from God's Divine Providence. In humility and docility, every phone call at work, every supper made for family, every diaper changed truly does become an opportunity to know Christ better. In turn, then, our own pride is probably the worst thing that has ever happened to us.