When God gives us consolation and peace of soul we are in danger of losing our sense of dependence and our humility, unless we bear in mind that:
• All this happiness is a gift of God that, at any moment, He might take from us and, if He does but turn His face from us, our joy will be turned to sorrow and heaviness.
• We live continually on the edge of a precipice and, without a humble reliance upon God, we shall be sure to fall over it.
• Prayer to God is necessary to keep us humble and to keep us from attributing to ourselves His good gifts.
However great may be the graces given us, and however high the degree of virtue we may attain, we are never safe unless we remember that we have in ourselves an inextinguishable fount of sin and weakness, of concupiscence and rebellion against God, otherwise our very graces may prove our ruin. We must cry out to God each morning as Saint Philip did, "Beware of me, O my God, this day, lest I betray Thee." Guard me against myself and the traitor within my heart that makes me so often unfaithful to Thee. Heal my soul, which abounds with what is displeasing to Thee.
Those who have great natural talents are in especial danger unless they cultivate constant dependence upon God. Their very ability is a danger to them and makes them plume themselves on what they are able to effect. Nabuchodonosor did this and for a time God took from him his reason until he recognized his own nothingness. Beware of priding yourself on anything you do, lest God take away that talent that has been the cause of so great an evil.
- text from Humility, Thirty Short Meditations by Father Richard Frederick Clarke, SJ