Being less than perfect is perfectly acceptable
We're all seasick, plus what to do with the weeds: A reflection on the Gospel for the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time.
3 months ago
Being less than perfect is perfectly acceptable
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How does the Catholic Church define the virtue of humility?
Catholic teaching presents humility as the virtue by which a person lives in truth about God and about oneself—acknowledging that God is the Lord and that the human person is limited and dependent on Him—so that pride and self-exaltation are rejected.
Pope Francis summarizes the Church’s understanding clearly: “Whereas pride and arrogance swell the human heart… humility restores everything to its correct dimension: we are wonderful creatures, but we are limited, with qualities and flaws.”
In other words, humility is not self-hatred; it is a right ordering of the heart so that one does not pretend to be more than one is before God.
The Catechism connects humility directly with the Gospel Beatitudes: voluntary humility appears as “poverty in spirit” (“Blessed are the poor in spirit”).
In the Catechism’s teaching on prayer, humility is described as essential to the posture required for authentic prayer. It asks whether, in prayer, one speaks “from the height of our pride” or “out of the depths” of “a humble and contrite heart,” and then gives the key conclusion: “humility is the foundation of prayer.”
It also frames the human person before God as one who needs to receive: “Man is a beggar before God.”
Similarly, in worship, the Catechism teaches that adoration (acknowledging God as Creator and Lord) “blends with humility” and gives assurance to supplications.
Catholic humility is explicitly Christological: God’s own way of acting is expressed in Christ’s humility. Pope Benedict XVI highlights that humility is not merely a human virtue but “God’s own way of acting,” chosen by Christ, who “humbled himself… unto death.”
Pope Francis likewise presents Christ’s humility as “gentleness and lowliness” and says that the Lord’s way involves “condescension and littleness.”
This imitation is not only interior; the Church also teaches that humility is learned through the realities of life: “Humility can only take root in the heart through humiliations.”
Finally, humility has concrete moral effects. The Catechism notes that the baptized person combats envy by training himself “to live in humility.”
This fits the broader picture that humility orders the heart so that one can rejoice in God’s action in others rather than resenting it.
In sum: the Church defines humility as a virtue that places the soul in its proper relation to God—rejecting pride, adopting the Gospel “poverty in spirit,” and enabling prayer and worship—by taking Christ’s “gentleness and lowliness” as the pattern to imitate.