The thought of graces received should increase humility and make us more humble to serve Our Lord even better.
Our Lord appeared to Saint Catherine of Siena while she was at prayer and said to her:
“Do you know, my daughter, what you are and what I am? If you learn these two things, you will be blessed. You are she who is not, and I am He who is. If you keep this truth in your soul, the enemy will never be able to deceive you; you will escape all his snares; never will you consent to perform an act contrary to my commandments, and you will acquire, without difficulty, every grace, every truth, every clarity.”
(Life, by Blessed Raymond, 1st part., ch. 10.)
This saying recalls the one spoken to Saint Teresa:
“True humility for the soul consists in knowing what it can do and what I am.” (Relation, 64.)
And to the Venerable Maria Celeste, the Lord said:
“As my greatness is infinite, so too, so to speak, are your poverty and misery. Know that you have never received enough light to know them as you ought. When you learn of the graces and gifts I give to your neighbor, you will delight in them and thank me for them, as if I had given them to you, and this will be for you a fruit of humility, an increase of charity, and for me an accidental glory.”
(Life, p. 60.)
“Remember that you are a dunghill covered with a little clod of earth,” Jesus said to Benigna.
(Life, p. 209.)
“My daughter,” Our Lord said to Saint Gertrude, “every time that, thinking of your unworthiness, you recognize yourself as unworthy of my favors and you abandon yourself to my tenderness, each time you pay me the rent you owe on my goods.”
(Book 2, ch. 30; Latin ed., p. 99.)
Mother Anne-Marguerite Clément received one day this grave lesson:
“If your humility is not deeper than that of all the souls under your guidance and to whom I have not given as many graces as to you, you will have no part with me.”
(Life, 1915, ch. 34, p. 491.)
And the divine Master gave her on another occasion the true reason for it:
“Count as nothing the treasures I have placed in you; the beauty that the bride brings to her Spouse is nothing other than the gifts of his liberal Goodness.”
(P. 450.)
God said to Brother Pacificus of the Order of Saint Francis, showing him, amidst the splendors of Heaven, a throne sparkling with gold and jewels:
“This throne, which you admire and which an angel lost through his revolt, is destined for the humble Francis of Assisi.”
The next day, at the hour of recreation, Brother Pacificus said familiarly to the holy patriarch:
– Father, what do you think of yourself?
– I think, replied Francis, that I am the most miserable and the last of sinners!
– How dare you say that and even think it? replied the brother.
– Yes, cried Francis, I am convinced that if Our Lord had granted so many graces to other persons, they would have profited from them better than I.
And the brother withdrew, meditating in his heart this oracle of the Gospel:
“Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”
“It is great folly, my daughter,” Jesus said to Saint Teresa, “to pay attention to the vanities of the world; cast your eyes upon me and see how poor and despised I have been by it; what good will your nobility be at the judgment of God? Do you think then that the great of this world are great before me, and should you others be esteemed for birth or for virtues?”
(Relation, 5, and Foundations, 14.)
How God Loves Humility
“It is for love of you that I made myself small, to teach you to humble yourself,” Jesus said to Anne-Marguerite Clément; “I hid myself to teach you to hide and to make yourself like me. See how much I love you: I hide in your humanity and your lowliness to plunge you into my divinity… I want you to be a treasure hidden from everyone and known to me alone.”
And, as this holy religious humbled herself before Him and said, like the Canaanite woman, that she was but a dog, unworthy of her Master’s favors, she heard these sweet words:
“Yes, you are a dog, and that is why I fill you with the crumbs from my table, for I love the little ones, I communicate myself to them and my pleasure on earth is to be with the humble.”
(Life, 1686, 3rd part., ch. 21.)
Another time, He said to her as to Saint Catherine of Siena:
“I am He who is and you are she who is nothing. Apply your mind to thinking of this and never depart from your lowliness and your nothingness. If you wish to be among my disciples, follow the lessons I have given them: renounce yourself, that is, that foundation of pride which believes itself to be something; take up my cross, embrace contempt and confusion and walk in the steps I have traced for you by my humiliations.”
(Life, 1686. 3rd part., ch.25.)
The divine Master also said to her:
“Humility attracts me; purity receives me; prayer nourishes me; poverty delights me; obedience binds me and charity clasps me.”
(Life, 1915, p. 408.)
On a day of the Visitation, she was meditating on these words: Sapientia aedificavit sibi domum: Wisdom has built herself a house.
Then the Lord said to her:
“Wisdom has three dwellings: the adorable bosom of the Father, the virginal womb of Mary, and the humble soul.” (Life, 1915, p. 424; cf. p. 370.)
God sustains those who plunge their nothingness into His greatness. Amidst her struggles and temptations, Margaret Mary had recourse to her dear Master, who answered her:
“Recognize then that you can do nothing without me, who will never let you lack help, provided you always keep your nothingness and your weakness plunged into my strength.”
(Ed. Gauthey, vol. 2, p. 58.)
“Plunge yourself into my greatness and take care never to leave it, because, if you leave it, you will not re-enter it.”
(Vol. 1, p. 109.)
Once the saint wrote to Mother de Saumaise (April 1687), He said to me with a voice full of authority:
“I will make you so poor, so vile, so abject in your own eyes, and I will destroy you so completely in the thought of your heart, that I will be able to build myself upon this nothingness.”
(Vol. 2, p. 362.)
One day He appeared to her in the form of a luminous child who came to rest upon her crossed arms; which made her say: My Lord and my God, by what excess of love do You thus lower Your infinite greatness?
“I come, my daughter, to ask you why you so often tell me not to approach you.”
You know, O my Sovereign, that it is because I am not worthy to approach You and even less to touch You.
“Learn that the more you withdraw into your nothingness, the more my greatness lowers itself to find you.” (Vol. 1, p.110.)
Our Lord, reminding Maria Giuseppa Kumi that He had chosen her to work for the salvation of souls, she excused herself on account of her nothingness and unworthiness.
“Can I not,” replied the Savior, “pour out my grace where I will? Know that, in these times, the pride of the learned and the vices of the proud have risen so high that I can no longer tolerate them. I choose the simple for my instruments.”
(Life, ch. 15.)
“The Holy Spirit takes care of humble souls,” Jesus said to Benigna. “When is a child carried in arms? When he is convinced that by himself he cannot walk.” (Life, p. 300.)
“If you want to find me,” Jesus said to Saint Veronica Giuliani, “first find nothingness; if you want to possess me, stop in nothingness; if you want to content me, lean on nothingness, not so that it may be appreciated, but so that it may be despised, vilified, trampled underfoot by all. If you want to love me truly, learn from nothingness how you must do it; you will love me, you will serve me, you will be all mine when you have rediscovered the principle, the middle, and the end of your being.”
(Diary, June 3, 1697).
I had a light, recounts the same saint, which gave me knowledge of my nothingness and a great esteem for humiliations and sufferings. At that moment, the Lord showed Himself bearing a heavy cross; He enlightened me on the virtue of humility and He said to me:
“I want you to learn this virtue in such a way that it always has the first place in all the works you will accomplish; so that they may all be offered to me in a spirit of humility.”
(May 8, 1699.)
“I am He who is and I have made myself your Spouse; you are she who is not, for you are nothing. But as I am sovereign love, I have loved you and I love you; and so great is my love that I always carry you in my Heart.”
(May 14, 1697.)
“I am He who is, and you, you are she who is not, that is to say nothingness, dust and corruption. You must walk in this way.” (November 3, 1715).
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“Hide yourself and manifest me. The time has come, I invite you to battle; I want you on the cross. Hide yourself in suffering, in my love, in death to yourself, detached from everything, stripped of everything. Renounce yourself generously and do everything with love and for love.”
(January 23, 1696.)
“My daughter, the more humble you are, the more love will grow in you. Pure love wants with pure suffering a life detached, humiliated, and persevering.”
(August 23, 1715.)
Source: Collection of Apparitions of Jesus to Saints and Mystics – Abbé Auguste Saudreau – 1882