Is there any place for humility among the Saints in Heaven? Or is it, like faith and hope, a virtue limited to this valley of tears? It might seem that in Heaven there are no motives for humility, no sins, no imperfections, no defects of any kind for which to humble ourselves. Yet only in Heaven will our humility be perfected, for only in Heaven shall we have a thorough knowledge of God and a thorough knowledge of ourselves. This knowledge will make us recognize even more than ever our own nothingness and God's infinite perfections. Our recognition of this will make us forget ourselves as we never can do on earth, so that God will be all in all to us.

Will this appreciation of our own nothingness be painful? No, it will be a source of eternal joy. For then we shall be able to rejoice in God; our happiness will be unclouded by any interfering thought of self. Our admiration of His perfect beauty will absorb all our faculties. Our absolute dependence on Him will be the truest independence. It will make us conformed to the image of the Son of God, the chief glory in whose Sacred Humanity will be the result of its dependence on His Divine Nature.

Hence in Heaven the Angels and Saints are represented as casting down their crowns before the throne of God, as falling on their faces and crying continually, "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts." If the highest dignity of the Saints is to be prostrate before the throne of God, we can never humble ourselves enough on earth, since those acts of humility will make our life like Heaven, and will fill us with a joy which will be a foretaste of the joy of the redeemed.

O God, who resistest the proud, and givest thy grace to the humble, grant me that true humility of which thy adorable Son has left us the example. Notwithstanding the powerful obstacles which my natural inclinations oppose to this virtue, I ardently desire to learn of Him to be meek and humble of heart. I am filled with confusion, O Lord, when I reflect on my inordinate love of esteem and applause, my extreme fear of contempt and humiliation, my independence of spirit, my attachment to my own ideas and opinion, my secret satisfaction in success, my latent mortification at seeing others preferred, my insatiable desire of praise and honor. O Lord, I should despair of the cure of maladies so numerous and grievous, did not I know that thou art an Almighty Physician, to whom nothing is impossible. Cast on me, O my God, a look of compassion, and have mercy on me. Grant that I may know thee, to love thee alone ; that I may know myself, to comprehend the depth of my miseries.

May I never forget the many motives that urge me to the practice of humility, the sins of my past life, my inclination to evil, my inconstancy in virtue, my tepidity in thy service, my ingratitude towards thee, my daily infidelities, and the innumerable defects which, notwithstanding my pride, I cannot disguise from myself. May I at length do myself justice, by sincerely believing myself to be the last of all creatures; may I henceforth shun praise as sedulously as I have hitherto sought it; may my only aim be to please thee, my only desire to be forgotten by the world; may the remembrance of the account I shall have to render of Thy graces, prove a perpetual stimulus to the practice of humility in the use of them. If by thy grace I am ever capable of doing any thing to promote Thy honor, I will refer the glory to thee alone; I will think of the voluntary humiliations of my Savior; I will take Him for my model, that by attaining resemblance with Him, I may deserve to be one day ranked among His elect in the kingdom of heaven. Amen.