Knowledge of Man's Nothingness, Which Produces Humility

A Catholic "and": beloved children and sinners

Catholic spirituality holds together two apparently opposed affirmations. On one side, man is created in the image of God, the "beloved child" of his Father, redeemed by the blood of Christ, called to eternal life. On the other, he is a sinner, wounded by the original fault, "inclined to sin"^[2], weakened in his powers.

Today, people gladly speak of the first side — the love of God, the dignity of the person, mercy — and hesitate to speak of the second. But in spirituality, one cannot choose half of the truth against the other without falsifying it. To diminish the gravity of sin is to diminish the greatness of the Love that forgives it. If the "debt" is small, mercy is small; if the debt is immense, mercy is immense. Forgiving a stolen snack does not carry the same weight as forgiving the murder of a loved one.

Hence this paradoxical consequence: to truly taste the Love of God, one must dare to look squarely at the darkness of human sin. Without that, mercy remains for the believer an abstract notion, whereas it should be the most overwhelming experience of his life. Those who gladly call themselves close to "the love of God" but systematically avoid the word "sin" do not merely reduce Christian anthropology: they diminish, without seeing it, God himself.

The double abyss: two kinds of knowledge that illuminate each other

This articulation is what the mystical tradition calls the double abyss or the twofold knowledge. St. Catherine of Siena received, in the Book of the Dialogue, a formulation that has become canonical: God tells her that the means of acquiring his knowledge and tasting his eternal truth is "never to leave self-knowledge"^[3] — and conversely, self-knowledge necessarily leads to the knowledge of God. The further the soul descends into its nothingness, the more it discovers the height, the breadth and the depth of the Love that bends toward it.

St. Angela of Foligno expresses it in a lapidary formula, frequently quoted in modern spirituality:

"To know the all of God and the nothing of man — that is perfection." — St. Angela of Foligno, The Book of Visions and Instructions, ch. 62^[4]

St. Bernard of Clairvaux develops the same insight in his Sermons on the Song of Songs:

"Observe how these two kinds of knowledge are necessary to you for salvation: if either is lacking to you, you cannot be saved. For if you are ignorant of yourself, you will have in you neither fear of God nor humility. And if you claim to work out your salvation without fear of God or humility, that is your affair." — St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs, 36, 7^[5]

This article treats the first side: the knowledge of our nothingness which produces humility. The second side — the knowledge of Love which produces trust — is the subject of a separate article: Knowledge of God's Love, Which Produces Trust.

Original sin: a refusal of the divine Will

In the beginning, according to the Genesis account, God had given everything to man: created beautiful, free, immaculate, he lacked nothing for happiness. Yet he freely chose to disobey — that is, to refuse God's Will in order to make his own prevail. That is the deep meaning of original sin: not only a moral transgression, but a rupture of the covenant between the human will and the divine Will^[6].

The echo of it runs through the whole biblical history. The Book of Genesis writes, in the chapters just after the fall:

"The LORD saw how great was man's wickedness on earth, and how every imagination of his heart was but evil always." — Genesis 6:5^[7]

And further on, after the Flood:

"The desires of the human heart are evil from youth." — Genesis 8:21^[8]

This spontaneous inclination toward evil can be verified even in the psychology of the child. No one teaches a child to lie, to boast, to hit his brother, to be jealous or to covet what he does not have — he does it all by himself. What must on the contrary be taught to him is the good: justice, sharing, self-mastery. Without patient education, human nature, left to itself, drifts spontaneously toward the worst.

"A certain infinity": the analysis of St. Thomas Aquinas

The gravity of sin is not measured only by the act committed. It is measured first by the dignity of the person offended: this is the reason St. Thomas Aquinas gives in the Summa Theologiae, concerning the reparation of sin through the Incarnation:

"Sin committed against God has a certain infinity, drawn from the infinity of the divine majesty; for the offense is the graver the greater he is against whom it is committed." — St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, IIIa, q. 1, art. 2, ad 2^[9]

The reasoning is implacable. Insulting a passer-by is not the same as insulting one's parents, which is not the same as insulting a head of state. The higher the dignity of the person offended, the graver the offense. Yet God is infinitely worthy. Every offense done to him, every disobedience to his Will, therefore reaches a gravity of a certain infinity which no human measure can grasp.

This analysis explains why sin, even apparently light in the eyes of men, required for its reparation the Incarnation, the Passion and the death of God himself. If sin had been an "ordinary" fault, a human repentance would have sufficed. But such an offense could be repaired only by a divine Person.

A weakened nature, inclined to sin

This "infinity in gravity" of sin does not exhaust the diagnosis. Original sin also left in human nature a lasting inclination to evil — without destroying it. That is the precise teaching of the Catechism:

"As a result of original sin, human nature is weakened in its powers, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 418^[10]

St. Thomas Aquinas teaches the same doctrine in the Summa: original sin consists formally in the privation of original justice — the will turned away from God — from which follows the lasting disorder of all the powers of the soul, turned toward mutable goods (Ia-IIae, q. 82, art. 3^[11]).

The nuance is decisive, and it is precisely what distinguishes the Catholic position from radical Protestant positions. The Church does not say that human nature has become evil (which Luther, in certain formulations, seemed to maintain). It says that its deep structure remains good, but that it is so ruined, wounded, inclined to evil that it is "incapable of directing itself toward the good by its own powers." This is what the sequence of the Veni Sancte Spiritus sums up — still sung today in the liturgy of Pentecost:

"Without your divine power, there is nothing in any man, nothing that is not perverted." — Sequence Veni Sancte Spiritus^[12]

The problem, in the contemporary Catholic sensibility, is that people gladly retain the first half of this teaching ("human nature is good at bottom") and carefully forget the second ("this nature is gravely ruined, perverted by sin"). The result is a truncated anthropology, cheaply optimistic, which makes the need for redemption incomprehensible.

Even our best works: a soiled garment

Blindness goes further still. Spontaneously, man compares himself with other men — and imagines himself, on average, "rather better than average." But he will not be judged by other men. He will be judged by God, who is perfect and infinitely holy. And before this absolute holiness, it is no longer only our sins that appear insufficient: it is even our best actions:

"We have all become like something unclean, all our just deeds are like polluted rags. We have all withered like leaves, and our guilt carries us away like the wind." — Isaiah 64:5^[13]

The word is terrible. "All our justice" — that is, what is best in us, our good works, our acts of generosity, our efforts at virtue — appears, before the holiness of God, as a soiled garment. A simple image illuminates it: if one offers an immaculate white shirt to a leper whose body is eaten away by disease, little time passes before bodily fluids soak through the fabric and soil it. The shirt did nothing: it is the wearer who dirtied it. So it is with our "good works": they are not bad in themselves, but they pass through our hands marked by sin, and they come out always tainted by our impure intention.

Purity of intention: the finest point

It is precisely this point — purity of intention — that the Italian mystic Luisa Piccarreta, Servant of God (1865-1947), hears Jesus develop for her in the Book of Heaven. The diagnosis is uncompromising:

"My daughter, what will become of souls that have done so many actions, even good ones, without purity of intention, out of habit or selfishness? What shame they will feel on the day of judgment on seeing these actions, good in themselves, but flawed because of their imperfect intentions. Instead of bringing them honor, they will be a source of shame for them and for many others. In fact, it is not the greatness of actions that matters to me, but the intention with which they are done." — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 2, 7 May 1899^[14]

And a little further on, in the following volume:

"Good acts in themselves, even great ones, which are not done for Me alone, are like rusted, tarnished gold, which does not shine. I do not even grant them a glance!" — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 3, 6 November 1899^[15]

The image — "rusted, tarnished gold" — is cutting. A "good work" done out of habit, or to be seen, or to win the esteem of others, or to relieve a feeling of guilt, keeps its good form but loses its brilliance. How many truly disinterested acts, completely gratuitous, have we performed in our lives? If we are honest, perhaps none. This is the biblical diagnosis with no appeal:

"There is no one just, not one, there is no one who understands, there is no one who seeks God; all have gone astray; all alike are worthless: there is not one who does good, there is not even one." — Romans 3:10–12^[16]

St. Paul takes up here several verses of the Old Testament (Ps 14, Ps 53, Is 59) to sum up what he calls the universality of sin. No one, among the sons of Adam and outside the grace of Christ, escapes this verdict. And it must be added that we have no idea what we would look like if God's grace were entirely withdrawn from us. A man deprived of all grace would not be merely "a little less good": he would sink into a darkness which the worst criminals in history barely brush. This is what a prayer sums up which biographers attribute to St. Philip Neri (1515-1595):

"Lord, beware of me. If You do not preserve me by Your grace, I shall betray You today, and I alone shall commit all the sins of the whole world." — Words lent to St. Philip Neri by his biographers (Bacci's Italian text collated; free rendering — see note)^[17]

These words — in the terms his biographers lend him — are no preacher's exaggeration. They express the fundamental intuition of the saint: at the root of his holiness there was not his own moral strength, but a total dependence, at every second, on the grace of God.

"Humility comes from the knowledge the soul has of itself"

At this stage, the conviction of our misery is still theoretical. As long as it remains a notion read in a book or heard in a sermon, it bears no fruit in the spiritual life. It must become personal, tried, appropriated. It is exactly this interior work that tradition calls humility.

St. Catherine of Siena hears the Eternal Father give her its simplest definition:

"Humility comes from the knowledge the soul has of itself." — The Eternal Father to St. Catherine of Siena, The Book of the Dialogue, Treatise on Discretion, ch. IX^[18]

And Jesus, in the Book of Heaven, confirms the same equation to Luisa Piccarreta:

"What is called humility in man should be called self-knowledge. He who does not know himself walks in falsehood." — Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 3, 12 January 1900^[19]

It is St. Teresa of Avila who gave it its most famous formula:

"Humility is walking in truth." — St. Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle, Sixth Mansions, ch. 10, no. 7^[20]

If humility is truth, then it consists neither in exaggerating oneself (pride) nor in depreciating oneself (false humility), but in seeing oneself as one is, neither above nor below. Yet, as one is, what is one? Truly nothing, of oneself: without the will of God, we could not even breathe; our heart would stop beating, we would fall into nothingness. The deep conviction of this radical dependence is exactly what tradition calls humility.

St. Bernard: self-knowledge as foundation

St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), spiritual master of the medieval West, is one of the authors who most developed this link between self-knowledge and humility. In his Sermons on the Song of Songs, he devotes a long development to what he calls "the solid foundation of humility":

"I want the soul, before all else, to know itself: this is what both usefulness and order require. […] Such knowledge does not puff up, but humbles and prepares the building. For the spiritual edifice can rise only on the solid foundation of humility. Now, to humble itself, the soul can find no means more effective or more fitting than true self-knowledge: let it hide nothing from itself, however, let there be no fraud in it, let it place itself squarely before itself, without letting itself be turned aside." — St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermons on the Song of Songs, 36, 5-6^[21]

Three elements are decisive in this passage. First, self-knowledge has no "puffing up" effect for pride: one does not come out greater in one's own eyes from a lucid examination of one's misery. Second, it is "the most effective or most fitting means" for humbling oneself: it is neither maceration of the body, nor austere practices, nor comparisons with distant saints, that produce humility — it is the lucid examination of what one really is. Finally, the image is architectural: without this foundation, the spiritual edifice cannot stand, whatever its apparent summit.

Thomas à Kempis, in The Imitation of Christ, restates the same insight in more accessible terms:

"The humble knowledge of yourself is a surer way to God than deep researches of science." — Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, book I, ch. III, 4^[22]

"You are she who is not; I am He who is"

The most radical formula of this link between the nothingness of man and the fullness of God is found, no doubt, in a word of the Eternal Father to St. Catherine of Siena, reported by her confessor Blessed Raymond of Capua in the Life — whose doctrine can also be read in the Dialogue:

"Do you know, my daughter, who you are and who I am? If you have this twofold knowledge, you will be happy. You are she who is not; I am He who is. If you keep this truth in your soul, the enemy will never be able to deceive you." — The Eternal Father to St. Catherine of Siena, words reported by Blessed Raymond of Capua, Life (Legenda Maior), ch. X^[23]

This is, in a few words, all of Christian spirituality: the absolute gap between Creator and creature, and the happiness that paradoxically comes from fully recognizing this gap. "She who is not" facing "He who is": transposed into prayer, this is the very name God had given himself to Moses at the burning bush (Ego sum qui sum, Ex 3:14). The humble soul defines itself, in its place as creature, as the negative of this divine name — "she who is not" — and finds in this definition not a collapse, but an indestructible peace: for the enemy "can no longer deceive it."

Must we say there is only evil in us?

At this stage, a reasonable objection arises. If humility is self-knowledge, and if self-knowledge first reveals our misery to us, must we conclude that there is only evil in us? Must we, to be humble, sink into morbid self-depreciation, call ourselves "rottenness" or "vermin," invent faults we do not have in order to debase ourselves the better?

The Catholic tradition answers clearly: no. A "humility" that exaggerates evil is not true, and therefore — by definition — is not humility (recall Teresa of Avila's formula: "humility is truth"). In her spiritual notebooks, Gabrielle Bossis of Nantes (1874-1950) reports these words which she attributes to Jesus:

"To make yourself quite little, do not diminish your gifts: only think that they all come from Me." — Words attributed to Jesus by Gabrielle Bossis, He and I, vol. I, no. 159^[24]

That is the key. True humility does not deny gifts — beauty, intelligence, musical talent, ease of speech, natural generosity, memory, health, money received by inheritance. It recognizes all these gifts, exactly for what they are — and it refers them wholly to their source, which is God.

St. Benedict: God the author of good, man the author of evil

The most rigorous formula of this articulation is found in the Rule of St. Benedict (c. 540), which remained for fifteen centuries the basis of Western monastic spirituality. In chapter IV, devoted to the Instruments of Good Works, one reads this double counsel:

"If one sees any good in oneself, attribute it to God, not to oneself; but as for evil, know that one is always its author and reckon it one's own." — St. Benedict of Nursia, Rule, ch. IV, 42-43^[25]

This double rule is decisively precise. The good I see in myself always comes from God — so I recognize it, I thank him for it, I do not deny it, but I do not attribute it to myself. The evil I see in myself comes from me alone — I do not shift it onto circumstances, upbringing, context, or others; I assume it as my own.

St. Catherine of Siena had formulated the same articulation as a debt of justice toward God:

"The soul renders to me what is due to me by giving glory and praise to my name, by attributing to me the graces and gifts it knows it has received from me; it renders to itself what is due to itself by recognizing that it is not, that its being comes to it solely from my grace, and that all it has besides comes from me and not from itself." — The Eternal Father to St. Catherine of Siena, The Book of the Dialogue, Treatise on Discretion, ch. IX, 6^[26]

Humility is therefore, here, an act of justice: rendering to God what belongs to him (all the good) and keeping for oneself what properly belongs to us (evil and nothingness). Any other distribution is, strictly speaking, theft: attributing to oneself a good one did not create is stealing God's glory from him.

St. Francis de Sales: recognizing one's gifts without vanity

St. Francis de Sales (1567-1622), Doctor of the Church, is one of the greatest modern masters of concrete humility. In the Introduction to the Devout Life, he explains with remarkable tact how this twofold attitude — recognizing gifts and referring them to God — can hold together:

"We must not fear that the knowledge of what He has put in us will puff us up, provided we are attentive to this truth, that what is good in us is not of us. Alas! Are mules not always heavy and foul beasts, though laden with the prince's precious and perfumed furnishings? What good have we that we have not received? says the Apostle; and if we have received it, why glory in it, as if we had not received it?" — St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, Part III, ch. V^[27]

The image of the mule is delightful: one may be laden with the prince's finest objects — that is, with God's greatest gifts, talents, virtues, missions — one remains nonetheless, in oneself, "a heavy and foul beast." The bearer is honored by his burden, but he does not thereby become as precious as what he carries. The Pauline quotation Francis de Sales invokes here is, as always, decisive:

"For who confers distinction upon you? What do you possess that you have not received? But if you have received it, why are you boasting as if you did not receive it?" — St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 4:7^[28]

The argument is final. All I have — without exception — was given to me. I produced nothing myself; even the capacity to produce, I received. How then can I glory in it as if I were its author?

The pianist example: every gift goes back to God

A concrete analogy makes this articulation tangible. Take a man who plays the piano marvellously well. He can adopt two attitudes.

First attitude — pride. He attributes to himself all the merit of his talent. "I worked, I persevered, I am gifted, I have taste." He forgets that he did not choose to be born with a musical ear; that he did not create his brain capable of memorizing scores; that he did not decide to be born into a family that could pay for his lessons; that he did not design himself the ten agile fingers that allow him to play; that he did not, fundamentally, choose to exist. Without a single one of these prerequisites, he could not have learned a single note.

Second attitude — false humility. He lies by saying "I am hopeless at the piano," while everyone hears him play perfectly. That is not humble: it is false, and therefore, once again, contrary to humility as truth.

Third attitude — true humility. He says, in all simplicity: "I play the piano marvellously well, by the grace of God who gave me a taste for music, ears that work well, agile fingers, and the encounter with a good teacher." He recognizes the talent, because it is true; he refers it wholly to God, because that is even truer.

This third attitude is foundational humility. It sums up thus: the humble man knows well that if God had willed it otherwise, he could never have played even a single note of the piano. He owes everything to God, and it would be unjust not to recognize it. The practical rule is therefore clear: humility does not consist in making oneself small, but in rendering to God what belongs to him — that is, all the good — and keeping for oneself what belongs to one — that is, nothingness and evil.

"All the sins of the whole world"

One of the most visible fruits of true humility is that it completely changes our gaze upon others. As long as I believe I am "rather a good person," I spontaneously pass an unfavorable judgment on those who sin: "I would never have done that." But the day I discover, in depth, that I am capable of all the misery in the world if God withdrew his grace — then judgment becomes impossible.

This is exactly the spiritual experience biographers lend to St. Philip Neri in the words reported above^[29]: the lively awareness that everything standing upright in my moral life — all my virtues, all my just choices, all my fidelity — rests, at every second, on a slender thread: the grace of God. If that thread gives way for a fraction of a second, I collapse. And then, how can I judge the one whose thread gave way for an instant?

Esteeming others above oneself

This is what St. Paul explicitly asks of the Christians of Philippi, just before the hymn on the kenosis of Christ (2:5–11):

"With humility regard others as more important than yourselves." — St. Paul, Philippians 2:3^[30]

The formula is demanding. This word "kenosis" designates the voluntary abasement of Christ, sung in the hymn that follows (2:5–11). It is therefore not only a matter of not despising others. It is a matter of esteeming them better than ourselves. This demand, seemingly impossible, becomes possible if — and only if — I have taken the measure of what I would be without grace. For then, I do not "believe myself worse" by an objective comparison between our acts (which would be inverted pride). I simply know that I am saved from every possible fall only by pure mercy, and therefore that the one facing me, saved perhaps by less grace, deserves more admiration than I do.

St. Claude la Colombière (1641-1682), Jesuit, spiritual director of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, draws the direct consequence:

"A truly humble person sees in himself only his faults and does not perceive those of others." — St. Claude la Colombière^[31]

This is not moral blindness: the humble man clearly sees that his neighbors have faults. But his spontaneous attention turns first, almost exclusively, to his own. He "does not perceive them" — in the sense that they do not become the principal object of his examination.

St. Francis of Assisi: "the greatest of sinners"

This logic leads certain saints to formulations that shock the modern ear. When St. Teresa of Avila writes — in words quoted by St. Alphonsus Liguori:

"Do not believe you have made any progress in perfection unless you esteem yourself the most miserable of creatures, and unless you desire to be relegated to the last place." — St. Teresa of Avila, quoted by St. Alphonsus Liguori^[32]

…or when St. Francis of Assisi — as St. Bonaventure recounts in the Major Legend (VI, 6) — calls himself the greatest of sinners^[33].

…one is tempted to relativize, supposing they did not "really mean it." But the biographical evidence points the other way: they really meant it. Not by comparing their objective acts with those of their contemporaries (where they obviously came out winners), but by measuring the gap between what they are before God and what they should be. The closer one comes to holiness, the more the gap between oneself and God's infinite purity is revealed. And the more one realizes that, without the grace that carried one to this point, one could have been at the very bottom. This is exactly the reverse of the ordinary illusion: the holier one is, the more of a sinner one believes oneself; the less holy one is, the humbler one believes oneself.

Blinding pride: John Chapman

Conversely, the proud man is not in Love. He believes himself "rather a good person," and may even imagine himself humble — which is the subtlest form of pride. Dom John Chapman (1865-1933), Benedictine abbot of Downside and one of the great English spiritual masters of the twentieth century, gave the reason in his spiritual letters: true humility knows itself to be imperfect — to imagine oneself humble would already be to cease to be so^[34].

The logic is implacable: he who believes he has attained humility has, by that very belief, demonstrated that he has not attained it. Authentic humility is always short of itself, always on the way, never arrived. That is what makes it inseparable from spiritual growth: as long as one advances, one deepens in humility; the day one stops, one enters — without noticing — into pride.

Before examining in detail the most accessible pedagogical framework — the five degrees of St. Francis de Sales — it is useful to place it within the long Catholic tradition which has attempted, since late antiquity, to structure the soul's progress in humility.

St. Benedict: the twelve degrees of the Rule (c. 540)

The first great systematization is found in the Rule of St. Benedict, written around 540 at Monte Cassino, which structured the entire monastic life of the West for fifteen centuries. Chapter VII is devoted entirely to humility, and it describes twelve degrees which the monk must climb like the rungs of a ladder:

1. to fear God and keep the memory of his presence;
2. not to love one's own will;
3. to submit oneself out of love to a superior;
4. to obey patiently in hard and unjust things;
5. to reveal to one's spiritual father all one's evil thoughts;
6. to hold oneself an unworthy worker;
7. to believe oneself truly, in one's heart, "inferior to all";
8. to do nothing outside the common rule;
9. to keep silence as far as possible;
10. not to be quick to laugh;
11. to speak gravely, humbly, gently, briefly;
12. to manifest humility outwardly by one's whole bearing^[35].

This structure is not a mechanical course: the twelve degrees represent less successive stages than complementary dimensions of one and the same spiritual reality. And their fruit, Benedict writes in a luminous page, is to arrive "at that love of God which, being perfect, drives out fear" (1 Jn 4:18): what was first servile fear ends as filial love.

St. Bernard: The Degrees of Humility and Pride (c. 1124)

Five centuries later, St. Bernard of Clairvaux takes up the Benedictine framework to comment on it in his treatise The Degrees of Humility and Pride (c. 1124), considered one of the summits of Cistercian mysticism^[36]. The structure of the work is striking: Bernard describes not one ascent, but two mirror movements — the ascent through Benedict's twelve degrees of humility (in reverse, from the twelfth toward the first), and the descent through the twelve corresponding degrees of pride. He begins by describing the descent, like a vertiginous fall from the first degree of pride — curiosity — to the twelfth — the habit of sin — which is definitive enclosure.

This "mirror" structure expresses a strong insight: each degree of humility has its contrary of pride, and every advance in the former is paid for by a corresponding combat against the latter. Humility is never acquired once and for all: it is a balance always under threat.

St. Francis de Sales: five practical degrees

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, a text preserved as an appendix to the Spiritual Conferences and attributed to St. Francis de Sales ("On the Five Degrees of Humility," Appendix I, piece B of the Annecy edition, vol. VI, which the editors date to c. 1617 — attribution not established, see note^[37]) proposes a different framework: five degrees, less systematic than Benedict's, but far more practical and accessible to lay people or to non-monastic religious. This framework has a major advantage: it is clear, concrete, verifiable. Each person can, honestly, examine his own conscience and identify the degree where he stands, as well as the next step to take.

It is this framework of the five degrees that the present section will set out in detail. It does not supplant Benedict's or Bernard's: it translates them into a modern language and makes them operational for ordinary spiritual life.

"Several saints have undertaken to establish degrees in humility. St. Francis de Sales's classification into five degrees has the merit of being simple, concrete, practical."

It is found in a text preserved as an appendix to the Spiritual Conferences ("On the Five Degrees of Humility," Appendix I, piece B, Annecy ed., vol. VI), attributed to St. Francis de Sales without established proof of authenticity (see note^[38]). Here is the progression as this text sets it out.

First degree — knowing one's misery theoretically

"We know that we are nothing but poverty, misery and abjection. This humility here, if it goes no further, is no great thing, and indeed it is very common; for there are few persons living in such blindness as not to know their vileness clearly enough, with but a little consideration." — St. Francis de Sales, Spiritual Conferences, Appendix I, piece B^[39]

The first degree is therefore barely a minimal honesty. Knowing intellectually that I am a sinner, that I am nothing of myself, that my works are imperfect — "that is not even humility," says Francis de Sales in substance, "it is just not being stupid." This theoretical knowledge is "very common": most lucid people possess it, believers or not. It does not suffice to transform life. It is only the gateway.

This is, for Francis de Sales as for St. Bernard, only a beginning.

Second degree — recognizing it deeply

It is here that, according to Francis de Sales, the highest step of all humility is taken.

"Recognition is saying and publishing, when need be, what we know of ourselves; but this means saying it with a true sentiment of our nothingness, for there are countless people who do nothing but humble themselves in words." — St. Francis de Sales, Spiritual Conferences, Appendix I, piece B^[40]

The gap between the first and the second degree is the gap between a theoretical knowledge and a real knowledge. Many humble themselves "in words," but do not really believe what they say. They repeat "I am a great sinner" without inwardly feeling its truth.

To experience this trap, transpose his test into a domestic example. Take a person who cooks badly, and who would like to appear humble. She is told: "But you cook so well!" She at once replies: "Oh no, I know I am not a good cook." Falsely humble? The test is simple. Take her at her word: "Ah yes, indeed, it is not very good." She will take offense. Francis de Sales draws the conclusion:

"Such persons are extremely glad to hear themselves praised, and still more if you believe it as you say it. So these terms of humility are only on the tips of their lips and proceed in no way from the inmost heart; for if you took them at their word on their false humiliations, they would take offense and would want honor to be repaired to them on the spot. From such humble folk may God deliver us." — St. Francis de Sales, Spiritual Conferences, Appendix I, piece B^[41]

The second degree therefore consists in passing from humility of words to humility of heart. The day I truly understand — and no longer only intellectually — that without God's grace I would be the worst sinner in the world, I shall have taken the most difficult step of the whole spiritual life. All the other degrees follow.

St. Francis de Sales honestly warns: the road between the first and the second degree is long. The entire spiritual life works at it. It is the work, precisely, of grace which — through trials, humiliations, falls — ends by engraving in the flesh of the soul what the mind already knew as a notion.

Third degree — recognizing it before others

Once the second degree is reached, the next becomes almost natural.

"The third is to avow and confess our vileness and abjection when others discover it: for oftentimes we readily say ourselves that we are perverse and miserable, but we would not want another to forestall us in this declaration; and if he does, not only do we take no pleasure in it, but moreover we take offense at it, which is a true mark that our humility is not perfect. […] We must therefore frankly avow and say: 'You are right, you know me extremely well.'" — St. Francis de Sales, Spiritual Conferences, Appendix I, piece B^[42]

The logic is implacable. If I am truly convinced that I cook badly, I shall have no difficulty recognizing it before others, because what they say will only confirm what I already know. Resistance to publicly recognizing our faults is, in reality, an inward resistance to recognizing them for oneself.

His spiritual daughter St. Jane de Chantal, co-foundress of the Visitation, expressed it still more radically:

"A truly humble heart, when humiliated, goes lower still." — St. Jane de Chantal^[43]

Instead of defending itself, the humble heart receives criticism as a grace — because it confirms a truth it already knew.

Fourth degree — loving contempt when it comes

"The fourth is to love contempt and to rejoice when we are disparaged and debased; for what likelihood is there of deceiving the minds of others? It is not reasonable. Since we avow that we are nothing, we must be glad that it is believed, said, and that we are treated as vile and miserable." — St. Francis de Sales, Spiritual Conferences, Appendix I, piece B^[44]

At this stage, the soul has gone beyond not only resistance to criticism, but mere passive acquiescence. It rejoices when evil is spoken of it, because that confirms the truth of its nothingness. Conversely, what troubles it is that false things be believed about it — whether good or bad. Falsehood wounds it; truth reassures it, however hard.

It is the soul arrived at this point — not a preacher's pose, but an inward conviction: for one who knows his nothingness, true criticism is a confirmation, not a wound.

Fifth degree — desiring contempt for the love of God

"The fifth, which is the last and most perfect of all the degrees of humility, is not only to love contempt, but to desire it, to seek it and to delight in it for the love of God: and those who attain here are most happy, but their number is very small." — St. Francis de Sales, Spiritual Conferences, Appendix I, piece B^[45]

The saint honestly acknowledges: "their number is very small." This summit — actively desiring contempt, "seeking it," "delighting in it for the love of God" — is the territory of the very great saints — St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Benedict Joseph Labre.

Thomas à Kempis describes it in the same perspective:

"For in judging merit, one must not consider whether a man has many visions or consolations, or occupies a high rank, but […] whether he is well convinced of his nothingness; whether he has a sincere contempt for himself, and whether he rejoices more in being despised by others and humiliated by them, than in being honored by them." — Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, book III, ch. VII^[46]

Why can this desire for contempt be held as the summit of humility, and not as a morbid deviation? Because it rejoins the very attitude of Christ in the Passion: "the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve" (Mk 10:45); he "emptied himself, taking the form of a slave" (Phil 2:7), "obedient to death, even death on a cross" (Phil 2:8). The fifth degree is, in short, willing to resemble Christ even in his extreme humiliation.

Summary of the five degrees

The progression must be read keeping in mind Francis de Sales's warning: the decisive leap is between 1 and 2. It is on this passage — from a "theoretical" humility to a "really experienced" humility — that all the work of ordinary spiritual life concentrates. Degrees 3, 4 and 5 follow from it almost mechanically, as practical consequences of the inward conviction.

Leaving the fear of others' gaze

One of the unexpected fruits of true humility is to free us from the slavery of others' gaze. As long as I believe I am "somebody," I spend a considerable share of my energy managing my image: what is said of me, what is thought of me, the impression I leave. It is one of the heaviest yokes of modern life: living under the "gaze of others."

But the day I know, in depth, who I am before God, what others think loses its crushing weight. St. Teresa of Avila expresses it — in words quoted by St. Alphonsus Liguori — with her usual precision:

"Thus one begins to conquer inward freedom, and no longer to care what is said of us, whether for good or for ill." — St. Teresa of Avila, quoted by St. Alphonsus Liguori^[47]

The consequence is liberating: one stops playing a role, one stops building an image for oneself, one finally becomes fully oneself, because one has nothing left to lose — since one has already recognized all of one's misery before God.

Peace in the face of criticism

St. Francis of Assisi restates the same liberation in his Admonitions:

"What we are before God, that we are, and nothing more." — St. Francis of Assisi, Admonitions, XX, 2^[48]

This is a definition of true personal identity. My identity is not what others think of me (Facebook, Instagram, family opinion, professional reputation). Nor is it what I myself believe I am (the flattering or catastrophic image I forge for myself). It is, strictly, what I am in the eyes of God — neither more nor less. Yet God sees all, judges all, and loves me as I am, in my truth.

This conviction transforms one's relationship to criticism. If the criticism is just, it confirms what I already know — no true wound. If the criticism is unjust, it does not touch my real being — which does not depend on the judgment of others. Even when criticisms are false, the humble man can remain at peace.

The practical rule of St. Philip Neri

From this inward liberation, St. Philip Neri is said to have drawn — according to his biographers — a practical rule of rare exactingness: he who truly wants to become a saint should never seek excuses, even when the accusation brought against him is entirely false^[49].

The rule is severe. It does not merely say "endure criticism." It says "never justify yourself," even when accused wrongly. Why? Because to defend oneself is to cling to one's image. Yet the image, precisely, does not matter. The truth of my being before God is known to God alone — who judges me in justice and mercy. What need have I then to be justified before men?

This rule is not a universal directive (it is sometimes just, out of concern for truth or for the defense of others, to defend oneself). But it is, for one who wants to advance rapidly in humility, an ascetic discipline which tradition says St. Philip Neri himself put to the test.

To conclude, one must recall what this descent into the knowledge of our nothingness is for. It is not an end in itself. It is not a morbid exercise in moral self-flagellation. It is the gateway to an encounter.

St. Faustina Kowalska, Polish mystic of the twentieth century, expresses it with overwhelming simplicity:

"In truth, O Jesus, I am seized with anguish when I see my misery. But I recover peace as soon as I see Your unfathomable mercy, which from all eternity is greater than my misery. This interior disposition clothes me in Your power, and what joy to know what I am." — St. Faustina Kowalska, Diary, § 66^[50]

This is the whole double abyss condensed into one sentence. There is the sight of misery — which plunges into anguish if it stands alone. There is the sight of mercy — which restores peace as soon as it accompanies the first. And there is this fundamental equation: the more the soul knows its misery, the more it can receive mercy; the greater mercy is in its eyes, the more it can, without collapsing, look its own misery in the face.

This equation is what Venerable Marthe Robin summed up in one sentence:

"Humility calls forth trust. The lower humility descends, the higher trust rises, the more the soul is raised to love." — Venerable Marthe Robin, Journal, December 1929 – November 1932^[51]

This is exactly the object of the second side of the double abyss: the knowledge of the infinite Love of God which produces trust. Without it, humility remains sterile and despairing. With it, humility becomes the shortest path to holiness.

• The Double Abyss: An Introduction — the Catholic doctrine of the twofold knowledge of self and of God, the root of all spiritual life.
• Knowledge of God's Love, Which Produces Trust — the second side of the double abyss: without this trust, humility remains sterile.
• The Necessity of Humility and the Danger of Pride — why this virtue is absolutely central, and why its contrary is so dreadful.
• Using Our Sins to Increase Our Humility and Trust — God's pedagogy through our falls.
• Humility and Trust: Changing How We See Our Sins — the concrete day-to-day application.
• Luisa Piccarreta (1865-1947) — the Italian mystic whose writings illuminate the place of humility in the life of the Divine Will.