When we compare the humility of Jesus Christ with that which is possible to ourselves, it seems as though the virtue in us does not deserve the name, for He who was omnipotent God lowered Himself to become the lowliest of men. Such an act of humility was an infinite abasement of Himself and had an infinite value in the sight of God. The Divine Word submitted to the obliteration of all His glory and majesty when He became man. This was humility indeed! But what is our humility? Simply placing ourselves in a position that more nearly approaches that which we deserve to occupy. When I humble myself, I simply divest myself of the false position of seeming to have any virtue or dignity or claim to honor of my own.
Even when He had lowered Himself to the nature of man, He was not satisfied, but He needed to seek out every kind of contempt and insult. He was regarded as a madman, as possessed with a devil, as a wine-bibber, as an impostor, as a leader of sedition, as a fool, as a criminal, and as a blasphemer. All this He took upon Himself of His own accord and deemed an honor. Is it not strange that I should shrink from sharing what the Son of God chose as the fitting treatment of His Human Nature?
He did more than this. He so identified Himself with human sin that He is said by the Apostle to have been made sin for us, and by this means He was able to find a fresh motive for humbling Himself as being laden with sin in the sight of His Heavenly Father. If He, the spotless Lamb, thus sought out motives of humiliation, how is it that I, on the contrary, seem to avoid all that humbles me?
- text from Humility, Thirty Short Meditations by Father Richard Frederick Clarke, SJ