511 part iv: meditations for weekly retreats Besides, how often you have rejected lowly occupations, tasks and functions [f.167v] out of the arrogance of your spirit, while you would have gained no insignificant merit should you have taken them on. Oh! What was going on with you when a chance for humiliating yourself presented itself to you? Due to your smugness and the arrogant judgment of your mind, you neglected or refused to submit yourself to it and at your great opportunity did not want to be spurned. Now you regret the loss of merit, and the awareness of your conceit torments your conscience. To action, therefore! If you hitherto incautiously ran into these very high rocks and the most dangerous Scyllas,251 from now on proceed more cautiously and resolve to crawl humbly, so that together with Jesus, the Teacher of humility, you may attain at some point the height of Heaven, and become wiser, singing with David: “Before I was afflicted I went astray” (Ps 119:67). MEDITATION XII ON THE SAME VIRTUE (OF HUMILITY) 1. Consider the examples of all of the humble saints, and especially of the most humble Virgin Mary and of the Incarnate Word born from her, who also summon you forth to this virtue or shame you if you have been contemptuous of it hitherto. Therefore, first comprehend by profound contemplation that to teach you humility either by word or by example, the Son of God came down from the bosom of the eternal Father and the most spacious royal castle into the womb of a young mortal virgin (which, however, seemed like Heaven to the Son of God), and began to teach in this same virginal womb this more sublime Wisdom, consisting in a humble spirit and in the contempt of the vainglorious doctrine of the wise of this world. 251 The rocks at the entrance to the straits between Sicily and Italy, opposite to Charybdis. There is an expression: “between Scylla and Charybdis,” which means "between two dangers," where one cannot be avoided without incurring equally great danger from the other. See footnote 130 (p. 298).
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