How can we become humble (Hieromonk Savvas Aghioreitis)

 

I remember a contemporary Elder on Mount Athos whom I once asked:

 — How can we become humble?

And he told me this:

— When we accuse ourselves.

Let us hold on to this… keep it in mind yourselves as well. Let us choose the light burden.

Unfortunately, from a young age we learn to carry the heavy burden. What is the heavy burden? To justify ourselves. To look for excuses… how to put things so as to convince the other person that we are right. How to “cook” the facts many times—perhaps even to lie—in order to appear blameless.

Whereas, as you see, the Saints did not suffer from this at all, and even when they were accused unjustly, they would say: “Forgive me.”

At every moment we should accuse ourselves, examine ourselves, and scrutinize ourselves.

“Accuse yourself for your faults,” says Saint Basil the Great, “and do not wait for the rebukes of others. If you are the first to accuse yourself and to ask for the mercy of God, then you will truly find mercy from God.”

“Self-reproach,” Saint Hesychius the Presbyter also tells us, “frees the soul from self-love, vainglory, and pride.”

Self-accusation—that is, condemning and judging oneself on one’s own for one’s mistakes—frees a person from the irrational love for the body called self-love; from the love of people’s “well dones,” which is vainglory; and from the exaggerated self-image and the desire to appear superior to others, which is pride.

“If a person accuses and humbles himself before the Lord,” teaches us also the most discerning Venerable Abba Poemen, “the Lord loves that person.”

Self-reproach, self-accusation, is—one might say—an excellent method by which a person attains a humble mindset, to humility.

“When a person reproaches himself,” says Abba Poemen again, “he sees his fellow human being as worthy of praise; whereas when he appears good in his own eyes, then that person who sees himself as good sees his neighbor as bad; but the one who condemns himself sees others as worthy of praise.”

“If you accuse yourself, you will always have peace; you will never be troubled,” says Abba Poemen. “The one who accuses himself is never disturbed. If you are truly righteous, you will be the first to accuse yourself.”

“The righteous man,” says Saint John Chrysostom, “is the first to become the accuser of himself. He who speaks ill of himself, who judges and condemns himself, appeases the Lord and is reconciled with Him. And the Lord makes the righteous man even more righteous, while He saves the sinner from his sins and makes him worthy of forgiveness.”

For this reason there is always gain. When someone judges and accuses himself, reproaches himself, he is reconciled with God, he appeases the Lord; and if he is righteous, he becomes even more righteous, and if he is a sinner, he is saved, because he is forgiven his sins.