{"id":282,"date":"2017-09-11T19:30:54","date_gmt":"2017-09-11T23:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/examine\/?p=282"},"modified":"2017-09-11T19:33:21","modified_gmt":"2017-09-11T23:33:21","slug":"a-letter-of-humility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/examine\/2017\/09\/11\/a-letter-of-humility\/","title":{"rendered":"A Letter of Humility"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nathan Miller, Senior Anchor Intern<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Humility is not thinking less about yourself, it\u2019s thinking about yourself less.<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

The amount of time I spend thinking about myself every day is frankly astonishing. When will I wake up in the morning? Have I studied enough to pass my Accounting test later today? Should I go for a run this afternoon so I keep myself looking good? I wonder if the new people I met today think I was funny? …You get my point I\u2019m sure. It is in light of this self-centeredness that Jesus speaks in Matthew 16 –<\/span><\/p>\n

For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

This is where humility enters. As a virtue, humility is meant to be our aide, God\u2019s free gift to us, to overcome the tendency of pride. Seeing as, however, it would be against the spirit of humility to stand up (digitally speaking) and tell you why you should be more humble, I simply wish to offer you this open letter to myself. In my own reflection over the past few years, I\u2019ve been drawn to this prayer called the <\/span>Litany of Humility<\/span><\/a>. It is a challenging prayer – I\u2019ve learned that when we pray for humility, God gives us opportunities to practice it! Still, it has been a blessing in my life and I hope my own struggles with it can be of some benefit for you.<\/span><\/p>\n

——<\/strong><\/p>\n

Dear Nathan,<\/span><\/p>\n

Now that you\u2019re reading this letter, it means you\u2019ve made it to graduation! As I write this now it is hard to imagine, but I\u2019m sure senior year flew by for you. I hope you look back on this final year at Our Lady\u2019s university and feel you have been a good steward of the blessed education you\u2019ve been offered. It took so many people to get you to this point – I know you couldn\u2019t have done it on your own! That\u2019s why I hope, above all, you kept your promise to pray the Litany of Humility each day. Such a simple prayer, yet possibly even a greater challenge than graduating. There are 3 lines in particular that stick out. I hope they\u2019ve stayed at the front of your mind amidst all the excitement of this year.<\/span><\/p>\n

From the desire of being loved: Deliver me, O Jesus.<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

I remember the first time you heard that line and the initial shock that accompanied it. It\u2019s the first one in the Litany and it gave you worries. \u201cIf God is love, isn\u2019t it good for me to seek love?\u201d Thankfully faith isn\u2019t a solo ride and you had great role models who helped you wrestle with this. They helped you realize that love is inherently good, in fact, the greatest good (1 Cor 13:13), but like any good thing, it can be misused. Love is freely given and freely received. They helped you realize that the crux of this prayer is that you actually deserve love <\/span>so much <\/span><\/i>that when you reach for it, you sell yourself short. Trust in God\u2019s timing.<\/span><\/p>\n

I remember the times throughout college when you believed you needed everyone to \u201clove\u201d you. When you met new friends or even with your best friends, you judged every interaction by how much the other people laughed at your jokes, listened intently to your stories, and whether they wanted to hang out with you again. If people didn\u2019t think you were the most interesting man in the world, you felt you did something wrong. Actually, it\u2019s unfair for me to write that in past tense because even now I still struggle. That\u2019s why I\u2019m writing this to you Nathan – I hope you\u2019ve learned to bring humility into every interaction you have. I hope you\u2019ve accepted the grace of this first line in the Litany to realize you don\u2019t need to be the center of attention. I hope you\u2019ve learned to spend more time laughing with other people, more time listening to their stories, and freely given your time to all the inspiring people you\u2019ve met here.<\/span><\/p>\n

From the fear of being humiliated: Deliver me, O Jesus.<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

Excuses are an addicting thing. A brutally honest friend once told you that you\u2019re always making an excuse when you mess up. If you\u2019re not right, it\u2019s because of this or that or something else. It\u2019s never genuinely your mistake because that would be a sign of weakness – that you aren\u2019t smart enough or athletic enough or convincing enough.<\/span><\/p>\n

As much as you didn\u2019t like to hear that at the time, I hope you\u2019ve taken the lesson to heart. I hope you\u2019ve learned to own up to your faults and stop worrying about how others might perceive a little failure. You are not defined by your successes or failures. I hope you accept every little embarrassing moment as a reminder that Jesus was humiliated too, and he endured it patiently out of love to win your heart.<\/span><\/p>\n

That others may be preferred to me in everything: Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

Sophomore year was difficult when you applied for numerous internships and didn\u2019t hear anything back for months. You wondered if you had become less \u201cvaluable\u201d because suddenly you weren\u2019t being chosen for the opportunities you wanted.<\/span><\/p>\n

But there\u2019s been countless little moments too. You\u2019ve been offended when people seemed more interested in what others had to say than you. You\u2019ve felt hurt when you didn\u2019t get the leadership position you felt you had worked the hardest for. You\u2019ve felt threatened when someone was more entertaining than you.<\/span><\/p>\n

In all this, I hope you\u2019ve recognized the futility of desiring preference. You spent too much of your life trying to impress others to gain favor. Yes, it\u2019s wonderful to be chosen and to feel special, but that only brings out a feeling for something that is already imprinted on your soul. God gave you incredible talents, wonderful friends, and a plan only you could fulfill. Why? So that you could serve others, just as He did. I hope you never forget His example. I hope that every day you spend less time thinking about your worries and more time thinking about His presence in the people around you. <\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure you\u2019re still working on it, but I hope this year and this prayer have brought you peace!<\/span><\/p>\n

In Christ,
\n<\/span>~Nathan<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nathan Miller, Senior Anchor Intern Humility is not thinking less about yourself, it\u2019s thinking about yourself less. The amount of time I spend thinking about myself every day is frankly astonishing. When will I wake up in the morning? Have I studied enough to pass my Accounting test later today? Should I go for a … Continue reading A Letter of Humility<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2551,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[215586],"tags":[215592,42492,215590],"class_list":["post-282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-september-2017","tag-anchor-intern","tag-humility","tag-litany"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/examine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/examine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/examine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/examine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2551"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/examine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/examine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":285,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/examine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282\/revisions\/285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/examine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/examine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/examine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}