513 part iv: meditations for weekly retreats the sons of this age think) way of humility, pursuing the Teacher of humility. They trained themselves in the school of humility continuously, to the last moment of their present life. As for you, considering these things, will you dare to elevate yourself? Will you dare to be puffed up by the presumptuous wind of elevated thoughts? Will you fail to imitate [f.168r] such champions and lovers of humility, while you feel indeed the burning desire to reach and to possess their everlasting glory? 2. Consider that a certain Doctor has passed on somewhere in his great writing, that the loss of virginity may be salvaged only by humility, and that the loss of chastity is compensated by lowliness, although its injured flower will never flourish again.253 Let this be taught to you first by Mary of Jerusalem,254 and then by Mary of Egypt,255 who, having lost the treasure of their virginal integrity, gained the love and grace of their immortal Spouse only through humility. The above-mentioned Doctor also teaches that he regained through humility among men what he had lost through pride.256 Study attentively and carefully think over also that God resists the proud, but He gives His grace to the humble (cf. 1 Pet 5:5; Jas 4:6). Wherefore if you eagerly desire to regain the graces lost, 253 In the margin “a certain Doctor” is indicated to be St. Augustine, yet without the title of where the writing was coming from. Cf. Augustinus, De sancta Virginitate — Liber Unus, in: PL, vol. 40, Ateliers catholiques du Petit-Montrouge, Paris 1865, p. 426 (cap. 50). 254 Evidently it is Mary, the sister of Lazarus from Bethany, which was a village near Jerusalem. This Mary in the Latin liturgy was identified with Mary Magdalene, a woman who was a sinner out of whom Jesus had cast seven devils (cf. Mk 16:9), and with the anonymous woman, a sinner, who came to the Pharisee’s house where Jesus was at a meal, knelt behind Him, washed His feet with her tears, wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed them in humility (cf. Lk 7:37-38). Cf. BLS (s.v. July 22 — St. Mary Magdalen). 255 Cf. Joseph-Marie Sauget, BS, vol. VIII, Istituto Giovanni XXIII nella Pontificia Universita lateranense, Roma 1966, pp. 981ff. (s.v. Maria Egiziaca, santa): St. Mary of Egypt, ca. 430, “at the age of twelve she fled from her father’s house to lead a comfortable life of sin in Alexandria … For seventeen years she lived in this state.” In Jerusalem, “having seen an image of the Theotòkos, she got down on her knees and begged [Mary], touched by a grace of conversion, to free her … to show her the way of penance that she should have already been following.” 256 Cf. AC, Bk. IV, Ch. 16; Bk. VII, Ch. 18.
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