Earlier we discussed the fundamentals of Girard’s mimetic theory, the process by which desire drives individuals and then communities to scandal, conflict, and, eventually resolution through violent scapegoating. This process, remember, while pre-rational and unconscious, is fundamental to every society, according to Girard.

We also discussed Girard’s analysis of Christianity and its inversion of this process. Under the scapegoating mechanisms of archaic religions, victims are imagined to be really guilty and are then mythologically deified. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the victims are shown to be really innocent, and, in the Christian tradition, the victim qua victims, Jesus of Nazareth, is actually God Himself.

As noted earlier, this dismantles the efficacy of the scapegoating mechanism.1 While we may look at the scapegoating mechanism as cruel, evil, or even bizarre, to do so is to look at it anachronistically. To those caught in a mimetic frenzy, this process, though, again, unconscious, is the glue that holds their societies together. Without the scapegoating mechanisms, archaic societies would come apart at the seams as rivalry drives more conformity and conflict, with no obvious way to introduce new opportunities for differentiation.

The perceived guilt of the victims of gone. The veil has been lifted and the crowd is shown to simply be murderers. The old gods are really dead. Christ is risen. But mimesis remains.

This, to Girard, is the opportunity and challenge of Christianity. Christianity simultaneously provides the answer to the conflict at the core of human society and sets us up for the final conflagration, our ultimate destruction.

In this short(er) talk, I’ll cover a few key points:

• Christianity’s Answer

• Christianity’s effect on the temporal order

• Ultra-Christianity, or Christianity without Christ

• The Girardian Antichrist

• The Apocalypse

Christianity’s Answer

The answer to the question of, “what should we do if mimetic desire remains but our mechanisms of resolving its conflicts are now gone?” is actually given to us not first by Girard, but by Christ Himself and later St. Paul:

Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:29-30)

Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. (1 Corinthians 11:1)

This is not some kind of throwaway comment, according to Girard, but is rather the core of the Pauline teaching built on top of the Gospel’s Triumph of the Cross.

In his 2009 essay “On War and Apocalypse,” Girard summarizes up the lesson well. It’s worth quoting at length:

A scapegoat remains effective as long as we believe in its guilt. Having a scapegoat means not knowing that we have one. Learning that we have a scapegoat is to lose it forever and to expose ourselves to mimetic conflicts with no possible resolution. This is the implacable law of the trend to extremes. The protective system of scapegoats is finally destroyed by the Crucifixion narratives as they reveal Jesus’ innocence and, little by little, that of all analogous victims. The process of education away from violent sacrifice thus got underway, but it moved very slowly, making advances that were almost always unconscious. It is only today that it has had increasingly remarkable results in terms of our comfort—and at the same time proved ever more dangerous for the future of life on Earth.  To make the revelation wholly good and not threatening at all, humans have only to adopt the behavior recommended by Christ: Abstain completely from retaliation and renounce the trend to extremes.

Recall that in any triangle of desire, the person being imitated is a model. That model is either an internal model or an external model, depending on its distance to the party imitating them. Internal models are near to the person and the rivalry is dangerous.2 These are often the models of archaic religions and founding murder myths – Romulus and Remus, Cain and Abel, Joseph and his brothers, for example. External models are further from the person and the good being desired is, therefore, also less-near. To our modern minds, we might think of role models in celebrities or historical figures.

But according to Girard, Christ fills this role for the Christian. His hypostatic union helps us understand this. He is fully God, so at a great distance from us. And He is fully man, so near enough to us that we can, realistically, strive to imitate him.

Even more, since He is aware of the true nature of desire, Christ can guide us by both inviting desire and desiring non-rivalrous goods. We can, in the words of St. Paul, “run to win the race” and not fear the conflagration of mimetic violence when winning the race means coming into the Love of God and participating in the divinity of Christ. 

Girard, again in his essay on Clausewitz, notes:

It is understandable that Christ frightened the apostles [as He is God]. He is also, however, the only model, the one that places man at just the right distance from the divine [as He is also man]. Christ came to reveal that his kingdom was not of this world but that humans, once they have understood the mechanisms of their own violence, can have an accurate intuition of what is beyond it. We can all participate in the divinity of Christ so long as we renounce our own violence.

So, the answer to the question of how do we keep mimetic violence from destroying society if we no longer can rely on the Scapegoating mechanism? Conversion. It is only through the rejection of violence, the imitation of Christ, caring for those who would have been scapegoated in a truly Christian way, that we can dismantle the power of mimetic desire over society.

The Christian Temporal Order: Concern for Victims

The more Christian a society is, the more it recognizes this. It not only rejects the scapegoating mechanism but it incorporates a concern for those victims, victims seen in the personage of Christ, ala His own commands to the corporal works of mercy (see Matthew 25:31-46):  ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’ 

To Girard, peak Christianity is probably around the introduction of the modern hospital in the late Middle Ages, an institution which lives out the corporal virtues and charity so blindly that it would have seemed incomprehensible to pre-archaic societies.3 Christianity, by destroying the constraints of the pre-archaic order, is the fertile ground for advances in science and technology, culture and the arts. Again, Girard in 2009:

Freed of sacrificial constraints, the human mind invented science, technology, and all the best and worst of culture. Our civilization is the most creative and powerful ever known, but also the most fragile and threatened because it no longer has the safety rails of archaic religion. Without sacrifice in the broad sense, it could destroy itself if it does not take care, which clearly it is not doing.

Societies that haven’t fully incorporated the Christian message still fall victim to mimetic frenzies, whether it’s witch hunts of the early Reformation period, the people’s crusade of the 11th Century, or lynch mobs throughout American history. These are dangerous, of course, but can be mitigated through further conversion, which is possible in a sacralized order.

Ultra-Christianity and Modernity

For Girard, a society that has de-converted from Christianity is far more dangerous than one that never converted at all. What we call “post-Christian” modernity, Girard sees not as a departure from Christianity but as its hyper-extension. 4

Modernity is a secularized form of Christianity that intensifies Christian concern for victims while severing it from forgiveness, transcendence, and truth. Secular rationalism, then, is not a clean break from Christianity, but a kind of Christianity lived out to the extreme. We can think of it as Christianity without Christ.

Christianity without Christ, of course, means that the solution to mimetic contagion – sincere conversion and true imitation of Christ and the Communion of Saints – is now off-limits. Concern for the victim as the ultimate social value remains, but incorporation of that victim into the suffering of Christ is gone.

So Ultra-Christianity is a social order that values concern for the victim and still has the threat of mimetic contagion, but is now left without either the pre-archaic religions and rites of sacrifice to prevent destruction or Christian conversion to prevent destruction. Instead, you get cycles of mimetic violence driven by a desire to save the victim but without the call to conversion and forgiveness. Rivalry erupts out of a desire to save the victim. Mimetic violence is back and now draped in the moral language of Christianity. Think here of how every political conflict in ultra-Christian society is framed in terms of who can better save the victim. Ironically, this means creating scapegoats out of those engaged in scapegoating.

In short, there is nothing holding back mimetic violence any longer. This holding back is described by St. Paul as the katechon:

“And you know what is restraining [τὸ κατέχον] him now so that he may be revealed in his time… the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way.” (2 Thess. 2:6–7).

This katechon for Girard is not only a theological concept. It is whatever holds back mimetic violence (and, ultimately, the Apocalypse)5: forgiveness and conversion in Christian theology but even ritual sacrifice or legal structures in an anthropological lens. The collapse of the katechon is the collapse of structures, whether legal, social, or theological, that hold back “the mystery of lawlessness.”

The Spirit of the Antichrist

This, for Girard, brings us to the spirit of the Antichrist: mimicking Christ’s mission while denying the core of His message. This is why Girard says the Antichrist “boasts of bringing to human beings the peace and tolerance that Christianity promised but has failed to deliver.”6

I want you to imagine Luca Signorelli’s painting The Preaching of the Antichrist to get this picture in your mind. A large renaissance painting with many of the usual characters, you see in the center of the painting a man who looks like Christ. Whispering in his ear is Satan, and through the purple cloak the Antichrist is wearing, Satan has slipped his hand, so the Antichrist’s hand is, really, Satan himself. The Antichrist, to Girard, is a counterfeit of Christ, not his complete inversion. 

This counterfeit uses the Christian message of concern for the victims (now dressed up in the language of Western humanism that nations from the United States to the EU to even China and Saudi Arabia use) but whips us further into mimetic violence with this message. Social discord rises over who can express more concern for victim groups, children are dismembered in the womb under the pretense of protecting victims, entire generations are cleansed in corporate eugenics of embryo selection to avoid having more “victims,” wars are waged over “protecting victims,” armament factories are built and funded and technological arms races accelerate to protect hypothetical victims. This is the spirit of the Antichrist – mimicking as Christ without His message of renunciation of violence, using violence for the ends of concern for the victim.

Apocalypse

So we’re in a place with no katechon, mimetic violence that wears the skin of Christianity by giving lip-service to concern for victims but rejecting conversion, and the potential to destroy the world in a way that was before totally technologically infeasible. It’s almost a throwaway line towards the end of I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, but Girard thought this was the groundwork for the apocalypse. Without conversion – true, deep conversion that involves imitating Christ’s desires and rejecting the violence that brings mimetic conflagrations to the fore – we risk destroying not just ourselves, but the world entirely.

Towards the end of his life, he seemed particularly concerned about radical Islam, as evidenced in the 2009 essay from which I’ve repeatedly quoted. Islamic terrorism uses what looks like a pre-archaic religion but comes at a time when the world is so ultra-Christian that we’ve totally lost any kind of mechanisms for responding to the threat of radical Islam. We lack the Christianity to convert radical Islamists. But our concern for the victim allows us to barrel towards a violent and technological conflict with this pre-archaic force.

That was sixteen years ago. I have to wonder how Girard’s analysis would change today. Radical Islam still exists, of course, but now we have new Satanic forces accelerating in our world. Videos of great human atrocities can be pumped into the phone of every man, woman, and child around the world within a day. Social media creates the illusion that external mediators are really more like internal mediators, whipping up mimetic conflict at a higher and faster pace. Concerns about a new artificial intelligence arms race – and a literal arms race over protecting countries with the capital for artificial intelligence – seed more opportunities for technologically-rich mimetic conflict.

I suspect his solution would be the same: radical conversion to Christ. Conversion, remember, is a turning away. We have to turn away from the rivalry and scandal that drives us towards mimetic conflagration, not merely not-engage.

In a world consumed by rivalry, scandal, and self-righteous victimhood, only the imitation of Christ — loving enemies, refusing retaliation, embracing the Cross — can break the cycle.

Everything else will fail. Everything else already is failing.

Remember your leaders, those who spoke the word of God to you; consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings…

Hebrews 13:7-9a, from Lauds for the memorial of St. Philip Neri

I noted before kicking off the retreat, and repeatedly afterwards, that Girard’s work should primarily be read as an anthropological theory first, not theology.1 Getting into questions of a “Girardian theology” is beyond the scope of this talk.

My follow-up talk can be found here:

Thanks for having me out this weekend. I’m by no means an expert in the work of René Girard, but I have led a number of these discussions on his works over the last decade and hope to be able to make this a fruitful weekend both for all of you as well as, selfishly, for myself. I also hope that this will be, to the extent that we can make a discussion about such an idiosyncratic thinker practical, a weekend that you can take out into the world to critically engage with reality as it is. Girard’s theory, while abstract at first, is ultimately a tool for reading both texts and reality — one that often explains human conflict more powerfully than modern secular theories.

In this short opening talk, I’ll cover some of the basics that we’d glean from reading the core text together, as well as perhaps present a few opportunities for critical engagement with Girard’s work. From there, we’ll move to discussion on the core text. Later today, we’ll take a look at two pieces which take Girardian thought as a jumping-off point for social and financial criticism. 

When I was first asked to lead this discussion, we chatted about which work of Girard’s we’d focus on. I settled on I See Satan Fall Like Lightning for a few reasons. 

First, a lot of Girard’s work focuses on classics (his first articulation of mimetic desire appears in the lesser-known Deceit, Desire and the Novel, whereas Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World lays out the full system. But I See Satan Fall Like Lightning is, in my opinion, his clearest and most mature synthesis) and it’s hard to assume everybody has familiarity with these texts going into the conversation. I assume everybody here has at least some basic acquaintance with the Gospels, the core focus of I See Satan Fall Like Lightning. 

Second, while Girard started as a literary critic and later anthropologist, he more or less came to view all of his work as an apology for Christianity (“On War and Apocalypse,” 2009). No work does this better or more explicitly than I See Satan Fall Like Lightning.

Third, Girard was a prolific writer who published more than two dozen books over a decades-long career in academia. Like anybody writing that long, his thought will evolve and change over time, with the refinement of certain themes, the dropping of others, and the development of broader theories addressing deeper and deeper issues. I See Satan Fall Like Lightning was published in 1999, towards the end of Girard’s academic career, allowing us to engage with his ideas as they’ve fermented and matured over decades.

Fourth, of course, it’s also a short text.

Girard’s project is ambitious and ultimately deeply Christian (though, he claims, not theological). He wants to de-mythologize Christianity.2 He is not looking to dismantle Christianity; rather, he wants to show just how Christianity dismantles the violent sacred. He simultaneously aims to re-sacralize anthropology that has been rendered flat and empty by modernist rationalism, which refuses to take seriously the Christian narrative and holds classic mythology up on a pedestal. This, he ultimately believes, makes the case for why Christianity is the true religion clear to those who are able to see the violence at the core of both ancient mythologies and Christianity itself. 

To see how he attempts this, let’s walk through a few things:

• Mimetic theory 101

• Mimetic theory as foundational to civilization

• The Christian Revolution

In our next session, I’ll give a short talk touching on Girard’s idea of hyper-Christianity, the Antichrist, and the Apocalypse. But let’s start with the core of this book.

Mimetic Theory 101

Girard is best known for mimetic theory. The defining characteristic to humans, according to Girard, is desire. We plan for the future, look to acquire goods, prestige, etc. And in doing so, we desire those goods. In desiring those goods, we imitate others. Party A desires (or is thought to desire) Good X. Party B sees that Party A desires Good X and, in seeing Party A’s desire for Good X, Party B comes to desire it more. A becomes a model of desire for B. When the model is near — socially or physically — rivalry escalates. 

Girard calls this an internal mediation of desire, which breeds conflict. External mediation occurs when the model is distant (like a literary hero or celebrity), and rivalry is less intense. I want to come back to external mediation later with respect to the role of Christ as one true mediator. 

But returning to our example: this desire creates a feedback loop, where now A desires X more, himself (and so B also becomes a Model for A in a real-life society of flesh-and-blood people), and so B desires X even more intensely.

This intensifying desire for the good creates rivalry. And in the process of A and B imitating each other’s desire for X, they become more alike (though they perceive themselves as becoming less-and-less alike). This is the process of mimetic doubling. B is scandalized by A — that is, A becomes both a model and an obstacle. This is what Girard calls skandalon: a stumbling block we can’t stop imitating, even as we grow resentful.3 We hate what we admire, and vice versa.

This does not occur in some mere vacuum (except in the cases of twins/close siblings, which are relevant for foundational myths). Others in the society come to desire these rivalrous goods. And as their desire intensifies, so does their rivalry. As the rivalry intensifies, so does their mimetic doubling. Discord and strife break out in the community. Eventually, the mimesis is so strong among members of the community, the doubling so intense, scandal so rife, conformity and rivalry so high, that it must be released in some fashion or the community will tear itself to shreds. The community then “lets off steam,” to take a phrase on which Girard’s translator focuses in the foreword.

How does it do this? By turning on somebody and, often literally, tearing that person to shreds. The community’s mimesis, at a fever pitch, turns into the act of scapegoating a victim. All the blames and frustrations are turned on this person, usually a downtrodden, defenseless type, like a refugee, an immigrant, a beggar, or the sick and disabled. After this victim is scapegoated, usually through being exiled, murdered, or, in the systems of archaic religions (more on this soon), sacrificed, the community “cools off,” and the process starts all over again. Importantly, none of this is deliberate. It’s an unconscious, pre-rational (sub-rational?) process that only becomes ritualized and codified later. 

This is the cycle of mimetic violence and it is core to Girard’s understanding of human society. The desire in this process is neither good nor bad, per se. It merely is. He takes mimetic desire as a given. It’s not the desire itself that is bad but rather the violence that comes from it. 

Girard identifies this process through antiquity, literature, and mythology. Importantly, in pre-Judeo-Christian society, the victim is always seen as guilty in some way or another. Oedipus is depicted in the myth as guilty of bringing the plague, killing his father, and marrying his mother For Girard, he is not in fact guilty.4 This is a post hoc justification for a communal murder. The beggar stoned to death in Ephesus “is revealed” to have been a demon all along.5 The victims are painted as monstrous and dangerous to the community. This illusion of guilt is essential to the scapegoating mechanism working.

Mimetic Theory and Civilization

Mimetic desire is so fundamental to society, and the violence that results from it so powerful and dangerous, that communities must develop ways to alleviate the threat. Here enters mythology and archaic religion.

After the victim is expelled or killed, peace and tranquility re-enter the community as the mimetic doubling subsides. The members of the community realize this connection – something about the “guilty” victim being killed has brought them peace. They then divinize the victim. This is true, according to Girard, in the founding stories of Rome (Romulus and Remus), Indian mythology (Indra and Vritra), and Greek mythology (Oedipus, Dionysus & later the pharmakos).6 

This guilty-into-mythic transformation is what binds these societies together. Rituals of sacrifice eventually arise to keep the mimetic contagion under control and protect the stability of the community. These become what Girard repeatedly calls “archaic religions.” The rites of the pharmakos are an example of this. One of these less-fortunates is chosen, dressed in royal garb, paraded through town and mocked, and eventually either expelled or murdered. The city is “purified” or “cleansed” through this process and, again, peace is restored. If the victim is not seen as guilty, the mechanism wouldn’t work. The crowd would have a significantly harder time turning on the victim, as we see in Ephesus, and the eventual violence would lose much of its cleansing effect as the guilt of the murder falls upon the members of the lynch mob. 

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As mythologies and historians of antiquity recall these rites, the crowd is portrayed positively and the victim negatively. It is only in Judaism that we begin to see variations on this process. Joseph, Job, the Suffering Servant, and the prophets of Judaism are also all scapegoated but clearly the narrators of the Old Testament view them as righteous, not guilty.7 They are not divinized, as that would be tantamount to idolatry, but it is noteworthy that Judaism, in which we see the first inklings of charity and what later become the corporal acts of mercy, both contains this mimetic cycle and inverts an important element on it. This should hardly be surprising if 1) we take mimetic desire as a given; and 2) we look at the Decalogue, which ends with a commandment against coveting the goods (something rivalrous!) of another. The mythologies of old and the Old Testament, therefore, lay the groundwork for the “Triumph of the Cross” that Girard sees in the Passion.

The Christian Revolution

Having understood all of this, we can quickly see where Girard is going with respect to the Passion. Much like the scapegoats of old, Christ is surrounded by a mimetic frenzy : the crowd turns on Him (yet they “Know not what they do.”), He is beaten, scourged, dressed in mock-regalia, paraded and ridiculed, and ultimately executed in the most humiliating way — a death reserved for the worst criminals of Roman society. And much like the Old Testament prophets, He is innocent. Unlike them, he is divine. He is God. Unlike any victim before or since, He actually resurrects. The disciples spread the Good News to the edges of the Roman Empire. They tell the story of Christ’s Passion, death, and Resurrection. In Girardian terms: they tell the story of the scapegoating mechanism for what it is - an actually divine Person, who was actually innocent, was murdered in the kind of frenzy that at this point defines society.8 

This is a total revolution, according to Girard. In Christ’s Passion we begin to see the scapegoating and lynching of every victim before and after Christ, and we see them for what they really are: victims. Christ unites to His Cross the suffering of every victim of the scapegoating mechanism and brings to fore the guilt of all who participate in the scapegoating. 

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The scapegoat mechanism relies on the illusion that the victim is guilty and monstrous. But if the victim — Christ — is revealed as innocent and divine, then the entire structure collapses. The crowd can no longer hide its violence behind sacred myth. The cathartic power of scapegoating disappears when we see it for what it is: murder. If scapegoating ends in just plain murder when the illusion is stripped away, what power does it really have to hold society together?

None, says Girard. Christianity therefore de-mystifies archaic religion. The rites and sacrifices re-enacting the violence at the core of these mythologies lose their secret, hidden power. He says, in his 2009 essay on Clausewitz’s On War:

[A]ll demystification comes from Christianity. Even better: The only true religion is the one that demystifies archaic religions.  Christ came to take the victim’s place. He placed himself at the heart of the system to reveal its hidden workings. The second Adam, to use St. Paul’s expression, revealed to us how the first came to be. The Passion teaches us that humanity results from sacrifice, is born with religion. Only religion has been able to contain the conflicts that would have otherwise destroyed the first groups of humans. Mimetic theory does not seek to demonstrate that myth is null but to shed light on the fundamental discontinuity and continuity between the Passion and archaic religion. Christ’s divinity, which precedes the Crucifixion, introduces a radical rupture from the archaic, but Christ’s resurrection is in complete continuity with all forms of religion that preceded it. The way out of archaic religion comes at this price. A good theory about humanity must be based on a good theory about God.

This Triumph of the Cross undermines the very foundation of archaic society. It reveals the fact that archaic society is built on innocent blood. Scapegoating no longer creates myths and rituals. When it happens, it only happens in a much weaker form.

In embracing the Truth and reality of the scapegoating mechanism, Christianity also brings down what binds these societies together: mimetic violence and scapegoating. 

Girard emphasizes early on that “Satan drives out Satan” — meaning the system preserves peace through violence, even though that peace is itself diabolical. Girard is right to note that Satan means “accuser” in Hebrew. 9

He identifies the scandal and violence that culminates in scapegoating with Satan, the father of lies, a liar from the beginning. Indeed, it is Satan that is the driving force behind mimetic contagion, scandal, and violence. Satan, for Girard, is less a metaphysical entity as the name for the accusatory, mimetic logic at the heart of human culture. Satan is the father of the pagan, archaic systems of old that sacrifice innocent victims to bring tranquility to their communities. And it is Satan who drives the crowd to crucify Christ.

This, then, is the Triumph of the Cross. God defeats Satan by revealing his system as the murderous evil that it is. The “powers and principalities” of which St. Paul speaks are, to Girard, not disembodied fallen angels per se but rather the spiritual-temporal pagan states that built their societies on top of this innocent blood.10 And it is the scapegoating mechanism at the core of their spiritual-temporal rule to which St. Paul refers:

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. (Ephesians 6:12)

The Christian revolution not only eventually destroys the pagan sacrifice states of old, but it ushers in a social revolution in introducing full-fledged charity: concern for the victim. This concern for the victim is obviously incommensurable with the archaic religions built on scapegoating, as Girard notes, when we know we have a scapegoat, scapegoating loses its power. This concern for victims, now widespread historical fact taken for granted by enlightened modern minds, is itself the fruit of Christianity’s slow transformation of cultural consciousness.

In our next session, we’ll talk about this concern for the victim and some of Girard’s social analysis of modernity. We’ll look at Girard’s belief that we’re not in post-Christianity, or secularism, but rather ultra-Christianity, and that it is ultra-Christianity that lays the foundation for the entrance of the Antichrist and the Apocalypse.

The Canticle of Revelation (11:17-18; 12:10b-12a) has a new dimension with this Girardian analysis. It is this hymn on the judgement of God, common in the hour of Vespers, with which I want to close:

We praise you, the Lord God Almighty,

who is and who was.

You have assumed your great power,

you have begun your reign.

The nations have raged in anger,

but then came your day of wrath

and the moment to judge the dead:

the time to reward your servants the prophets

and the holy ones who revere you,

the great and the small alike.

Now have salvation and power come,

the reign of our God and the authority

of his Anointed One.

For the accuser of our brothers is cast out,

who night and day accused them before God.

They defeated him by the blood of the Lamb

and by the word of their testimony;

love for life did not deter them from death.

So rejoice, you heavens,

and you that dwell therein!

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I’d like to thank the organizers for inviting me this evening. I am hardly an expert on this topic, but I do hope it’s a fruitful evening together, as I’ve become interested in this topic when I realized I really had soul in the game here.

We had initially discussed this several months ago and settled on this date. Of course we had no clue that it would be particularly relevant this week. Not only has the newly-elected Holy Father taken the name Leo XIV – Leo XIII being the pontiff typically associated with the institution of Catholic Social Teaching and the author of Rerum Novarum – but Leo XIV explicitly noted after his election that he was inspired to take the name in part because of the influence of Rerum Novarum:

"... I chose to take the name Leo XIV. There are different reasons for this, but mainly because Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution. In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice and labour."

Yesterday was also the 134th anniversary of Rerum Novarum and, based on hints already dropped by Leo XIV, I expect we’ll see lots of citations to this document and developments on it in this pontificate. Even this morning, Pope Leo XIV affirmed the importance of the family as a society, using language reminiscent of Leo XIII’s anthropology in Rerum Novarum.

So what I want to do for you today is explore the importance of Rerum Novarum, the context in which Leo XIII was writing, how we can understand this context with respect to the Church generally and to the Church today, and give you some principles from Catholic Social Teaching that we see both in Rerum Novarum but as well as other magisterial documents since Rerum Novarum. What I hope for you to take from this is an understanding of what Catholic Social Teaching is, how it is different from the ideologies that dominate our world today, and how the Church can and does speak to the world. I also hope that this will provide you with a grounding to understand and engage with the social teaching that we’ll see from the new Holy Father.

The encyclical itself is rather short and readable, so we’re not going to dig into a paragraph-by-paragraph summary or derivation of specific arguments. If you haven’t read it yet, I encourage you to do so. It’s also important to note that this is hardly Leo XIII’s only social encyclical. As pope, he wrote 86 encyclicals in 25 years, including Diuturnum Illud and Immortale Dei on the origin of political power, Libertas condemning the liberal conception of liberty and asserting the Christian conception, Sapientiae Christianae on the duties of Christian citizens, Longinqua Oceani on the challenges and opportunities for the Church in the United States, and Testem Benevolentiae on Americanism. To get a fuller view of the tradition, I encourage you to read beyond Rerum Novarum. 

RERUM NOVARUM AND CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING - EVER ANCIENT AND EVER NEW

You sometimes hear it said that Rerum Novarum introduced Catholic Social Teaching, or that Leo XIII introduced Catholic Social Teaching. In a certain sense this is true, but it's also not true. It's true in the sense that the thing that we call Catholic Social Teaching is inaugurated with this encyclical, that you see the Church speaking to the world in a way that touches on many temporal issues of economics, justice, and politics, in a way in this document that you don't see said in previous documents. But it's also not true that it's something totally new or totally invented in 1891. Just a quick look at the citations in the document can show you this. Pope Leo XIII pulls from St. Thomas Aquinas, the Church Fathers, and a long tradition of talking to temporal and social issues in the world. He’s not inventing something new - but he’s speaking in a new way to the world based on the context and challenges of the world in 1891. 

It’s helpful to look at the context of the document to understand its importance and influence. “Rerum Novarum” translates literally as “New Things,” and colloquially as “On Revolutions.”

These “new things” in the 19th century are legion. Technology, social institutions, governments, the state of the Church in the world, and the practical beliefs of large masses of people are totally different at this point than they were even a century before. Vatican I, the first ecumenical council since Trent in the 16th Century, had only recently concluded and drew specific lines around papal infallibility. Liberalism and socialism are in full-swing and Christianity is, at this point, privatized enough that the temporal powers largely don’t even think about consulting the Papacy about how they want to run their governments. This is tragic in one sense but also provides a new opportunity for the Church to speak up on temporal matters. 

Leo XIII sees, rightfully, that we have gone from a world in which the Church is the world to a world in which the Church sits, in a certain sense, apart from the world. For the first time since the collapse of the Roman Empire, it can be said that the Church really sits as a shining city on a hill (to pull language from Pope Leo XIV) rather than diffused throughout society broadly, and therefore can exert teaching authority in a way that is not immediately seen as a threat by the temporal powers.

In short, we enter into post-Christianity. Pope Leo XIII recognizes the burden under which the masses toil after the advent of the Industrial Revolution. He also sees the ideologies that have popped up to fill the void left by Christianity throughout society. These ideologies are, and continue to this day to be, some form of socialism and liberalism.

Liberalism gives rise to the conditions under which the industrial revolution is possible. And then the conditions of the industrial revolution give rise to socialism as a response to those crushing conditions for the working masses.

Leo XIII acknowledges the attraction for many of these ideologies. And with this encyclical he tells the world that they have to accept neither socialism nor liberalism. Instead, he says, Christianity and Christian society are the answers to the social strife that gives rise to ideologies. 

He strikes at the heart of socialism by declaring unequivocally that a right to private property exists and that man has this right to promote his temporal and spiritual good. But he also strikes at liberalism by asserting the dignity of the worker and subverts liberalism by noting just how poorly the liberal order actually preserves private property and the ownership of productive assets by those doing the work. 

He exhorts political leaders to protect the dignity of the worker, the right to private property and well-ordered enterprise, and respect for the right moral order in society. And he also teaches the Christian worker to go forth into society and do the work of building up a Christian civil society.

CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING IS NEITHER SOCIALIST NOR LIBERAL

It is a mistake to read this document as either pro-socialist or pro-liberal. The Pope is, to use language from Pius XI in his social encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, steering the ship of the Church (and, exhorting society to follow the Church) between the twin rocks of liberalism and socialism. Liberalism is bad and denies the dignity of the worker, the true nature of man, society, and freedom. Socialism is worse and deeply unjust. The solution is to reach back into the tradition and pull the lessons from Christendom, from the Angelic Doctor, and the Church Fathers.

The socialists say there is no (or extremely limited) right to private property. The Church says no, private property is a natural right given by God to man to till the earth and fill it. He uses this right to provide for himself, his family, and the poor.

The liberals say that property belongs to individuals who exert their labor over it. The Church says no, property exists for the good of all and private property exists to serve that end. (This is known as the Universal Destination of Goods, a core principle of Catholic Social Teaching.)

The socialists say that society is fundamentally made up of classes of labor and capital, that these classes are in natural conflict, and that the hierarchy found in them is unjust. The Church says no, society fundamentally is made up of man in relation to God and of families that precede the state. Hierarchy is natural and, when ordered properly, a good thing.

The liberals say that political authority comes from the people. The Church says no, political authority comes from God.

The socialists say that the state ought to manage the relations among workers and between workers and capital. The Church says no, a community of higher order should not interfere in the life of a community of lower order. (This is the principle of subsidiarity.)

The liberals say that wages should purely be a function of free agreement between two individuals and that there’s no such thing as an unjust wage so long as it was freely agreed upon. The Church says no, just wages are a function of being able to pay a worker a rate that would allow him to frugally support a family. 

The socialists say that society is a struggle of class against class. The Church says no, the rich and the poor are one in Christ and can work with and serve each other fruitfully and justly. (This is the principle of solidarity.)

The liberals say that the state ought not prioritize any one type of person against another. The Church says no, the poor are uniquely disadvantaged relative to the rich and that a preferential option ought to be given to them when thinking about policy, constitutional order, and justice. (This is the principle of the preferential option for the poor.)

And both liberals and socialists say that productive assets should be owned by either capital or by labor. But the Church says no, both can own productive assets and these assets ought to be distributed throughout society, so that man can provide for himself and others. 

And we could go on. I give these examples to exhort you not to fall into the trap of thinking that Catholic Social Teaching is some kind of way to make socialism or liberalism palatable or to throw a crucifix on something fundamentally post-Christian or anti-Christian. 

Catholic Social Teaching, inspired by Leo XIII and developed by popes since him, is radical in comparison to the ideologies of liberalism, individualism, and capitalism, and the ideologies of socialism and communism. It’s a totally different way of seeing society and one that asserts that a Christian order is fundamentally different than the post-Christian, materialist order. There is dignity in work, the rich and the poor can work together without needlessly being at each other’s throats, yet the rich have special duties of charity and justice to the poor, and the State ought to protect the dignity of man in his work, enterprise, and relations.

That fundamental difference is rooted in the fact that the Church sees reality for what it is. Man exists in relationship to God, to a family, and then into a series of other relations like civil society and the State. He is not merely a member of a class struggling against another class or an individual like Robinson Crusoe birthed from the ether onto an island.

This view of reality allows the Church to step into the social order and to guide it according to principles that transcend partisan political debates and ideological struggles. She sees the true purpose and end for man and society, and therefore she can provide principles about the proper purpose of material wealth, enterprise, and political power. 

CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING SINCE LEO XIII 

Since Leo XIII led the Church in speaking to the modern world, popes continue to build on this with their own new social encyclicals. As times change and new things arise posing challenges to the Church, the dignity of the human person, and the temporal order’s relationship to the spiritual, new popes take up this mantle to show how the Church can lead the world and avoid catastrophe in materialism and ideology.

While each pope has his share of social encyclicals, three encyclicals in particular build off of Rerum Novarum, explicitly and in particular. Those are Quadragesimo Anno by Pius XI, and Laborem Exercens and Centesimus Annus by John Paul II.

Pius XI promulgated Quadragesimo Anno in 1931, forty years after Rerum Novarum, to commemorate Rerum Novarum, clarify the teaching of Leo XIII, and apply it anew to a world in which nationalism, communism, and what the Pope calls “economic dictatorship” are all on the scene. Like Leo XIII before him, Pius XI notes that the Church certainly has authority to speak on temporal matters, even if it may not be her charism to speak on the minutiae of policy.

Pius XI reminds us that while we have a right to private property, that right exists for an end and that end is our sanctification. Failure to use that right properly does not invalidate the right outright, but possession of goods does imply obligations on those who have them. The rich are obligated to support the poor, businessmen ought to invest in their businesses building real things in order to provide meaningful work and pay to their employees, and, importantly, opportunities to become owners. To me, as somebody often on the “capital” side of these conversations, the exhortation of the popes to give workers a chance to share in ownership as a function of their labor is some of the most interesting from the Magisterium. Pius XI encourages the development of partnership-contracts that give workers a share in ownership as a function of their labor. This can take many forms, but arrangements which move towards the vision of private property and labor laid out in Rerum Novarum are to be preferred over mere wages or mere salaries. He also encourages, again, that those doing work and those doing businesses take this mantle out into the workplace and the world, that they bring the Gospel to their coworkers and employees, and that they be “apostles to those who follow industry and trade.”

At the 90th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, John Paul II promulgated Laborem Exercens. Again, context is useful here. We’re looking at a different society in 1981 than in 1931 or 1891. There’s the rule of Communism over much of the globe, financialized capitalism over the rest, mass media, mass migration, and the nature of labor continues to change. John Paul II reminds the Church and the world of the dignity of labor and the laborer, the theological roots of labor (I strongly encourage you to read this document to get a good sense of why the Church views labor as good and dignified, from a theological perspective), and, like Pius XI, applies the principles of Catholic Social Teaching to the “new things” of his age. Just as the family precedes the State, so does labor precede capital, he notes. And from this, we are reminded that man has primacy over things. The new materialism of the Post-War period presents a temptation to view man as subject to the things produced in an economy and he wants to push back on this. Building on Pius XI and Leo XIII before him, he exhorts us to find new opportunities for ownership of productive assets, whether through partnerships, shareholding by workers, or other innovations on business based on the teaching of the Magisterium.

And ten years later, John Paul II then promulgated Centesimus Annus, on the 100th anniversary of Rerum Novarum. Much like Quadragesimo Anno, this document repeats the principles of Rerum Novarum, provides clarification, and applies these principles to the new things of 1991. He condemns fascism, socialism, liberation theology, atheism, consumerism, and the new challenges of mass drug use and pornography. Like much of his writing, John Paul II emphasizes the role of freedom in truth, the way consumerism subjugates the person, and the need for Christians to destroy structures of sin in society through the development of new opportunities, intermediary groups, and organizations rooted in the Gospel and providence. To invest, John Paul II notes, is always a moral choice, “the decision to invest, that is, to offer people an opportunity to make good use of their own labor, is also determined by an attitude of human sympathy and trust in Providence, which reveal the human quality of the person making such decisions.”

NEW THINGS AGAIN

With this rich tradition in view, we begin to get a sense for how a pope like Pope Leo XIV may tackle the new challenges of our time. Clearly things have changed significantly since Rerum Novarum was first promulgated in 1891, but also keep in mind that Centesimus Annus was promulgated nearly 40 years ago and before any significant advances in information technology. The Holy Father explicitly wants to tackle the challenges that artificial intelligence poses to how we think about human dignity, justice, and labor. I’d venture to say that there are other parallels to 1891, 1931, 1981, and 1991, each in their own way. Communism and socialism, at least as they were initially conceived, have largely fallen by the wayside. Liberalism emerged victorious from the Cold War and dropped any remaining pretenses of being the religious-friendly political order. 

In terms of technology, mass media no longer means newspapers, radio, and television but instead means every man, woman, and child having access to read and write to every other person on the planet in their pocket at any given time (and this is to say nothing about what generative AI does to media). Pornography is totally mainstream in most western countries. Developing countries are just now coming online. Biotechnology presents both chances to apply our God-given reason in a way to alleviate the suffering of billions, or the temptation to open up a bottomless bottle of Blackpills in an economy of flesh. Advances in robotics will soon reshape the common man’s experience of transportation, agriculture, and warfare. Educators already must be adept to the new challenges (and opportunities) posed by artificial intelligence tools in the hands of students as young as pre-K. 

So, there’s a lot to cover. Lots of opportunity for the Church to be a beacon of light to a world now so far from Christendom.

Personally, I am excited about this new pontificate and the Holy Father’s desire to reach back into the rich tradition of the Church and bring it into our times. I pray for him and his cross he must carry in his office, and you should too. We’ll need his leadership.

I’d like to leave you with a quotation from Centesimus Annus that I think sums up Catholic Social Teaching well:

What Sacred Scripture teaches us about the prospects of the Kingdom of God is not without consequences for the life of temporal societies, which, as the adjective indicates, belong to the realm of time, with all that this implies of imperfection and impermanence. The Kingdom of God, being in the world without being of the world, throws light on the order of human society, while the power of grace penetrates that order and gives it life. In this way the requirements of a society worthy of man are better perceived, deviations are corrected, the courage to work for what is good is reinforced. In union with all people of good will, Christians, especially the laity, are called to this task of imbuing human realities with the Gospel. (Centesimus Annus, 25)

Further Resources

The following resources are by no means exhaustive but a good place to start for better understanding Catholic Social Teaching.

• Encyclicals:

  • Rerum Novarum, Leo XIII, 1891

  • Quadragesimo Anno, Pius XI, 1931

  • Laborem Exercens, John Paul II, 1981

  • Centesimus Annus, John Paul II, 1991

• A Reader in Catholic Social Teaching, ed. Kwasniewski

  • This book provides a decent foundation but also is lacking in important ways. I would include the following not found in the volume: 

    • Pacem in Terris by Pope John XXIII

    • Populorum Progressio by Pope Paul VI

    • Laborem Exercens by Pope John Paul II

    • Caritas in Veritate by Pope Benedict XVI

    • Laudato Si by Pope Francis

• Aquinas: Political Writings

• Podcast: “Pope Leo: Rerum Novarum and Catholic Social Teaching on the 134th anniversary,” Andrew Willard Jones & Alex Denley

  • Published on May 15, 2025, this podcast provides helpful context, some of which is covered in this talk, for understanding Rerum Novarum. I highly recommend Andrew Willard Jones’ work on Church history.

Thanks to Rev. Canon Ross Bourgeois, I.C., for helping workshop an earlier version of this talk.

Introduction

When I was asked to share a meditation with you all this weekend, I had to sit back and think about what I wanted to discuss. We’re all laymen. Many of us are converts (or, not even Catholic). Many of you are fathers – several times over and years ahead of myself – and husbands. We’re also all workers of some kind or another. Some of us are entrepreneurs, professionals, laborers. And we’re all trying to live in the first and second adequations (nb: the intellect to reality and the will to the intellect).

So that’s the framework with which I’d like to approach this conversation: father, husband, and worker living the adequations. Specifically, I want to dive into a conversation on a virtue that has been on my mind since our last retreat, admittedly because I have not been great at practicing it, and is directly relevant to our liturgical celebrations this week: humility. 

To better understand and frame this virtue, I want to look at the Most Humble, who was neither a father nor a husband but still provides the ultimate model of this virtue: the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Part I: Mary Most Humble

Every evening at Vespers we pray the Magnificat – the great Canticle of Mary from the Gospel of Luke during her Visitation to her cousin Elizabeth. And this past Tuesday, the Church celebrated the Solemnity of the Assumption, commemorating Mary’s assumption into Heaven, body and soul, at the end of her earthly life. 

The Gospel reading for that Solemnity is also (part of) the Magnificat. I’ve given you all a copy of the Magnificat in English and Latin.

The Church says this prayer every evening and found it important enough to include it as the Gospel reading for a major feast. At first, quick, glance, it can be easy to miss the sheer emphasis on Mary’s humility in the Magnificat in English. We tend to think of humility as a sort of meekness (although I’ll note later that these are technically different virtues), or quietness. In the Latin, though, we see the root word for humility: humilitatem, not once, but twice. Humilitatem is translated as lowly. This can be quite different than how we typically think of humility in the colloquial sense. 

Pay particular attention to the beginning of the Magnificat. This relationship between humility and greatness is relevant later.

We’ll talk in the next part about the distinct nature of the virtue of humility and where it sits relative to the other virtues and how it reinforces and helps develop the other virtues. But I want to emphasize that humility as this distinctly Christian and, as displayed here, Marian, virtue is both a sort of lowliness and, incredibly important. We can get a sense of what humility is by looking at the humility of the Blessed Virgin. 

The Blessed Virgin Mary was closer to Christ than any other person. She carried Him in her womb, cared for Him as an infant and child, and walked alongside Him at His Passion. Even at the Annunciation she was said to be “full of Grace,” at a time when no man had grace. St. Thomas says:

 So much so [was she full of grace], that whereas other Saints excelled, each in some particular virtue, the one in chastity, another in humility, another in mercy; the Blessed Virgin excelled in all, and is given as model of all.

(Aquinas, Opusculae, 8)

And elsewhere, he notes:

The Blessed Virgin Mary was the nearest possible to Christ; for from her it was that He received His human nature, and therefore she must have obtained a greater plentitude of grace from Him than all others.

(Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III.27.v)

In the list of her great virtues, the Blessed Virgin is known as “most prayerful,” “most chaste,” “most hopeful,” “most faithful,” among others. But first among these, St. Alphonsus Ligouri notes, she is “Mary most humble.”

I want to emphasize this, because this is mentioned twice in the Magnificat, and for many of the Saints and Doctors of the Church, this humility was the characteristic which made God so pleased with the Blessed Virgin and made her the Mother of God.

Let’s look at what some of the saints had to say about Mary’s humility. From St. Alphonsus Ligouri’s The Glories of Mary:

“While the king was at his repose, my spikenard sent forth the odour thereof.” Saint Antoninus, explaining these words [from the Canticle of Canticles], says that ‘spikenard, from its being a small and lowly herb, was a type of Mary, the sweet odour of whose humility, ascending to heaven so to say, awakened the Divine Word, reposing in the bosom of the Eternal Father, and drew Him into her virginal womb.’

…

The Abbot William says, ‘He would not take flesh from her unless she gave it.’ Hence, when this humble Virgin (for so it was revealed to Saint Elizabeth of Hungary) was in her poor little cottage, sighing and beseeching God more fervently than ever, and with desires more than ever ardent, that He would send the Redeemer; behold, the Archangel Gabriel arrives, the bearer of the great message … The Lord is with thee, because thou art so humble Thou art blessed amongst women. … But what does the humble Mary reply to a salutation so full of praises? Nothing. … [but she is troubled] … Her trouble, then arose entirely from her humility, which was disturbed at the sound of praises so far exceeding her own lowly estimate of herself. Hence, the more the angel exalted her, the more she humbled herself, and entered into the consideration of her own nothingness. … She was troubled; for, being so full of humility, she abhorred every praise of herself, and her only desire was that her Creator, the giver of every good thing, should be praised and blessed. … [she told Saint Bridget:] ‘I desired not my own praise, but only that my Creator, the giver of all, should be glorified.’ 

…

Mary already answers; she replies to the angel and says: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word.” O, what more beautiful, more humble, or more prudent answer could all the wisdom of men and angels together have invented, had they reflected for a million years?

…

[Saint Bernard notes,] in his four sermon on the Assumption of Mary, in which, admiring her humility, he says: ‘And how, O Lady, couldst thou unite in thy heart so humble an opinion of thyself with such great purity, with such innocence, and so great a plenitude of grace as thou didst possess?’

…

[T]he higher she saw herself raised, the more she humbled herself. 

…

[Saint Bernard says:] ‘Though she pleased by her virginity, she conceived by her humility.’ Saint Jerome confirms this, saying that ‘God chose her to be His Mother more on account of her humility than all her other sublime virtues.’

…

This she had already declared in her canticle, breathing forth the most profound humility, when she said: “Because He hath regarded the humility of His handmaid … He that is mighty hath done great things to me.” On these words, Saint Lawrence Justinian remarks, that the Blessed Virgin ‘did not say, He hath regarded the virginity, or the innocence, but only the humility.’

…

‘Mary’s humility,’ [Saint Augustine] says, ‘became a heavenly ladder, by which God came into the world.’

…

The prophet Isaias foretold the same thing: “And there shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of his root” Blessed Albert the Great remarks on these words, that the Divine flower, that is to say the only-begotten Son of God, was to be born, not from the summit, nor from the trunk, of the tree of Jesse, but from the root, precisely to denote the humility of the Mother: ‘By the root humility of heart is understood.’ The abbot of Celles explains it more clearly still, saying: ‘Remark that the flower rises, not from the summit, but out of the root.’

(Ligouri, The Glories of Mary, 313-320)

And here’s St. Theresa of Calcutta on the Magnificat:

The Magnificat is Our Lady’s prayer of thanks. She can help us to love Jesus best; she is the one who can show us the shortest way to Jesus. Mary was the one whose intercession led Jesus to work the first miracle. “They have no wine,” she said to Jesus. “Do whatever he tells you,” she said to the servants. Let us go to her with great love and trust. We are serving Jesus in the distressing disguise of the poor.

(Theresa, Total Surrender, 102)

Mary’s humility, then, is the virtue by which she merited to become the Mother of God. Let’s look at how she, herself, saw this virtue.

St. Alphonsus says that when Mary saluted Saint Elizabeth:

“My soul doth magnify the Lord,” as if she had said: ‘Thou dost praise me, Elizabeth; but I praise the Lord, to whom alone honor is due: thou wonderest that I should come to thee, and I wonder at the Divine goodness, in which alone my spirit exults: “and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.” Thou praisest me because I have believed; I praise my God, because He hath been pleased to exalt my nothingness: “because He hath regarded the humility of his handmaid.’

(Ligouri, The Glories of Mary, 456, emphasis added)

He says elsewhere, regarding humility as the lowliness of Mary:

As a beggar, when clothed with a rich garment, which has been bestowed upon her, does not pride herself on it in the presence of the giver, but is rather humbled, being reminded thereby of her own poverty.

(Ligouri, The Glories of Mary, 455)

Mary very clearly saw herself as “lowly” – as humble! But she wasn’t obsequious. She didn’t shirk off what was asked of her, as we noted above (she said nothing). And through her humility, she bore Christ. 

With the Blessed Virgin Mary as our guide and model of humility, let’s zoom out to build out our understanding of this virtue. Then, we’ll ask how we can apply it in our own lives.

Part II: The Nature of Humility

I often find it useful to start during any definition of terms to start with what something is not but may be confused as being.

Humility is not a fake lowliness, a sort of put-on show to put off praise. This is often actually a form of pride, in which one continually debases oneself below one’s state and one’s actual, objective place out of a disordered desire for praise for one’s lowliness. A man who says he is a worm or that he is “totally depraved” often works from a place either of confusion or pride, thinking he is acting on the virtue of humility. Both of these are failures of adequations to reality.

Humility is also not meekness. Christ tells us to follow him for he is meek and humble of heart (Matthew 11:29), but even here we see that he is meek and humble. Meekness restrains anger, according to Aquinas, while humility restrains pride. In a sense, these complementary virtues allow us to live out love of neighbor and God, respectively, as many virtuous actions call us to love our neighbor for the sake of God. Aquinas, again:

And that which is said: learn of me because I am meek and humble of heart? For the whole New Law consists in two things: in meekness and humility. By meekness a man is ordained to his neighbor. Hence, “O Lord, remember David and his meekness (Psalm 131.1).” By humility, he is ordained himself and to God. “Upon whom should my spirit rest, but upon him that is quiet and humble (Isaiah 66.2).”

(Aquinas, Commentaries on the Gospel of Matthew)

And here’s Saint Theresa of Calcutta on the relationship between meekness and humility in this commandment of Christ:

The only thing Jesus has asked us to be is meek and humble of heart, and to do this, he has taught us to pray. He has put “meek” first. From that one word comes gentleness, thoughtfulness, simplicity, generosity, truthfulness. For whom? For one another. Jesus put “humility” after meekness. We cannot love one another unless we hear the voice of God in our hearts.

(Theresa, Total Surrender, 109-110)

Finally, humility is not opposed to magnanimity. Magnanimity is “greatness of soul,” so, it can appear that humility, or seeing oneself as lowly, as we’ve seen it put so far, would be contrary to developing a habit of reaching for greatness of soul. Aquinas explicitly refutes this claim in the Summa question on humility, but it is worth noting here - I will not put it better than Aquinas:

Humility restrains the appetite from aiming at great things against right reason: while magnanimity urges the mind to great things in accord with right reason. Hence it is clear that magnanimity is not opposed to humility: indeed they concur in this, that each is according to right reason.

(Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II.II.161.ii, emphases added)

Humility helps with magnanimity, by removing the striving after those things against right reason. In fact, Aquinas says as much in the same question:

It is contrary to humility to aim at greater things through confiding in one's own powers: but to aim at greater things through confidence in God's help, is not contrary to humility; especially since the more one subjects oneself to God, the more is one exalted in God's sight. Hence Augustine says (De Virginit. xxxi): "It is one thing to raise oneself to God, and another to raise oneself up against God. He that abases himself before Him, him He raiseth up; he that raises himself up against Him, him He casteth down."

(ibid., emphases added)

From this picture of dispelling what humility is not, we begin to see the picture of what it is, then. Humility is a virtue that helps us see ourselves as how we really are, especially with respect to God and the spiritual life. And we are lowly. The Blessed Virgin Mary is the most exalted of all creatures and even she is infinitely lowly in comparison to God. St. Bernard defines humility as, "A virtue by which a man knowing himself as he truly is, abases himself." We then correct our desires for the right things.

In other words, it consists in 1) seeing one’s place, especially relative to God and reality, correctly; and 2) abasing oneself upon that. This abasement removes the vice of pride, which is a roadblock to the spiritual life. Humility, then, is a virtue that moderates between the vices of pride (mind not adequated to reality) and too-great obsequiousness (mind not adequated to reality).

We can both be humble and live out the commandment to “be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” This is where we revisit magnanimous action. You can both be humble with respect to your estimation of yourself in the world and magnanimous in your greatness of soul. 

Let us revisit the Magnificat: while we often pray it as “my soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,” it can be translated as, “my soul magnifies the greatness of the Lord.” The magnanimous soul, through its great actions, magnifies God. The Blessed Virgin Mary, through her humility, magnifies God.

Humility, however, is not, contrary to what we may think after hearing of the Glories of Mary, the greatest or first of the virtues. In fact, it is a part of one of the cardinal virtues - temperance, that regulation of the concupiscible appetite. This is where our desires lie. So, by developing the virtue of humility, we properly order our desires to reality. In other words, humility, properly understood, is a function of a proper understanding of objective reality and a regulation of the desires in consequence of that. If you read the Litany of Humility, for example, the petitions are for proper desires. 

Humility helps us see that what we desire without God, and without right reason, should not be pursued and instead orient our lives and our minds towards right action, especially right action in God.

To illustrate this point and to make another: humility is a radical virtue. It doesn’t really exist as a virtue before Christ. Indeed, we can imagine a pagan who is proud – he possesses all the other natural virtues – but we could never see him as a good man in any supernatural sense. His desires – for power, for the flesh, for status, for money, etc. – are disordered. He lacks a proper relationship to objective reality and, therefore, the requisite virtue for the supernatural life. “God resisteth the proud, and giveth his grace to the humble” (James 4:6).

Humility, is a uniquely Christian virtue that helps us see ourselves as we really are, to orient ourselves towards good action after seeing ourselves as we really are, and to seek God in what we do. It allows us to honestly say, like the Psalmist, “O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me,” and to enter into the supernatural life.

St. Benedict wrote of humility and developed twelve degrees of humility in his Rule. I’ve included it on the back of your handout with the Magnificat, as well as St. Thomas’ inversion of it from his section on humility in the Summa (II.II.161).

While St. Benedict lists the degrees as extending from God’s grace – an inward starting place – St. Thomas recognized that we can also develop virtue hand-in-hand with supernatural grace through action, so we can invert the steps from action first to inward state.

Let’s take a look at them.

(Adapted from Vost, K. Humble Strength, 2022. Ascension Publishing Group)

We can see that for St. Benedict, we start with Fear of God and end with humility in the heart and eyes.

For St. Thomas, this is inverted, as starting with humility in heart and eyes is the first step towards man’s development of the virtue through illumination of the intellect and controlling the will. Both, though, end up with the same steps, just developed through different routes (one through a grace, the other through the will).

So, with that, I’d like to extend this framework to our three roles: father, husband, and worker, and pull a bit on some insight of other Saints.

Part III: Application of Humility

Again, humility in particular is a radical virtue. You will find it in Christian saints but not in the heroes of the classical era. In fact, one of the reasons I felt the call to focus our conversation on humility is that with the further breakdown of right reason and the adequation of the mind to reality, we are seeing a resurgence of an outright rejection of humility. Across popular culture, we see fewer and fewer heroes upheld for their humility. Leaders are selected not for their humility but for their brashness. Young men regularly feed their minds on vicious male role models who reject a slew of virtues but most especially the virtue of humility.

So, with that in mind, let’s turn to practical applications in developing and teaching this virtue. Three quick thoughts.

Humble Father

We are fathers not to whet our own appetites or to take pride in raising children, and certainly not for economic reasons to make light work with many hands, but instead to “be fruitful and multiply.” Our goal as fathers should be to raise good children of high character. St. Paul tells us in Ephesians 6 that fathers are to bring up their children “in discipline and instruction of the Lord.” Saint John Chrysostom notes that this is not mere knowledge but rather character and wisdom. With that, we can understand our task as fathers: we are to develop our children in the Lord by helping them to develop wisdom and character.

Last year, it was noted that we don’t want to start with catechesis first but rather a way of life, the development of the virtues. We can easily imagine somebody who has memorized the entire Catechism of the Catholic Church but is a bad person. This aligns closely with the teachings of James Stenson, the founder of the Heights School outside of DC and author of numerous books on parenting. Stenson tells us that it is character that builds the foundation for a life of supernatural love. This is what stays with them over time and upon which they can think and act in their vocations as they grow up out of our houses.

How, then, do children develop character? Stenson repeats throughout his writing, “Children develop character by what they see, by what they hear, and by what they are repeatedly led to do.”

This, I believe, brings us back to our virtue of humility. By seeing ourselves as we really are and ascribing all of our good qualities to the grace of God, we can then properly act in a way that models various other virtues for our children. Just how humility lays the groundwork for magnanimity to bring us to great action, humility can lay the groundwork for us to live out other virtues as examples and models to our children.

St. Alphonsus Ligouri recounts a story of how humility can lead to little actions – in this case, in the life of a priest, but we can apply it to our lives as well:

Marinus, or Martin d’Alberto, of the Society of Jesus, used to sweep the house and collect the filth through love for this Blessed Virgin. The Divine Mother one day appeared to him … and thanking him, as it were, said, ‘O, how pleasing to me, is this humble action, done for my love!’

(Ligouri, The Glories of Mary, 459)

We can extend this to what children hear, and as they get older, to what they do. 

I do think Stenson throws out an important note regarding television (and I would say, the Internet, now). Media in the home are a competitor or rival for attention and modeling to the children and against the parents. You can apply the “see, hear, do,” framework not just to your actions – how they see you help around the house, interact with your wife, engage in work, etc. – but also to any other media you bring into the home.

This is where I think humility as a virtue specifically becomes even more important. It’s no shocker to claim that popular culture has degraded humility for decades – but with the rise of a specifically anti-Christian popular culture, especially online with everything from neopaganism to pornography becoming more and more accessible to children and covered with a veil of “virtue,” this virtue becomes more and more foreign to those who do not see it modeled in the home.

A simple suggestion for modeling humility in the home, which I believe helps specifically for children seeing humility as the gateway to the supernatural life, is the inclusion of Liturgy of the Hours among the family. Your children see, hear, and eventually do, daily prayers, time taken out specifically to honor God, and to do it in a disciplined way. Another benefit of these prayers is that they are not solely petitionary prayer, so it helps acquaint children with other types and ends of prayer.

Humble Husband

To be a humble husband is to see oneself as he really is – the spiritual head of the family and the household – but to then abase oneself. There are two excerpts from St. John Chrysostom which I would like to read at length for framing thinking of being a humble husband – the man placed at the head of the wife to lead her just as Christ is the head of the body, the Church.

First, Chrysostom on what we can offer:

For see how great a service the wife contributes. She keeps the house, and takes care of all things in the house, she presides over her handmaids, she clothes them with her own hands, she causes you to be called the father of children, she delivers you from brothels, she aids you to live chastely, she puts a stop to the strong desire of nature. And do thou also benefit her. How? In spiritual things stretch forth your hand. Whatever useful things you have heard, these, like the swallows, bearing off in your mouth, carry away and place them in the mouth of the mother and the young ones. For how is it not absurd in other things to think yourself worthy of the preeminence, and to occupy the place of the head, but in teaching to quit your station. The ruler ought not to excel the ruled in honors so much as in virtues. For this is the duty of a ruler, for the other is the part of the ruled, but this is the achievement of the ruler himself. If you enjoy much honor, it is nothing to you, for you received it from others. If you shine in much virtue, this is all your own.

You are the head of the woman, let then the head regulate the rest of the body. Do you not see that it is not so much above the rest of the body in situation as in forethought, directing like a steersman the whole of it? For in the head are the eyes both of the body, and of the soul. Hence flows to them both the faculty of seeing, and the power of directing. And the rest of the body is appointed for service, but this is set to command. All the senses have thence their origin and their source. Thence are sent forth the organs of speech, the power of seeing, and of smelling, and all touch. For thence is derived the root of the nerves and of the bones. Do you see not that it is superior in forethought more than in honor? 

So let us rule the women; let us surpass them, not by seeking greater honor from them, but by their being more benefited by us. I have shown that they afford us no little benefit, but if we are willing to make them a return in spiritual things, we surpass them. For it is not possible in bodily things to offer an equivalent. For what? Do you contribute much wealth? But it is she who preserves it, and this care of hers is an equivalent, and thus there is need of her, because many, who had great possessions, have lost all because they had not one to take care of them. But as for the children, you both communicate, and the benefit from each is equal. She indeed in these things rather has the more laborious service, always bearing the offspring, and being afflicted with the pains of childbirth; so that in spiritual things only will you be able to surpass her.

(Chrysostom, “Homily 5 on Second Thessalonians,” via New Polity 4.2, emphases added)

And elsewhere, Chrysostom addresses the complaints of men who say their wives don’t respect them or that they don’t allow themselves to be ruled:

For the man who loves his wife, even though she be not a very obedient one, still will bear with everything. So difficult and impracticable is unanimity, where persons are not bound together by that love which is founded in supreme authority; at all events, fear will not necessarily effect this. Accordingly, he dwells the more upon this, which is the strong tie. And the wife though seeming to be the loser in that she was charged to fear, is the gainer, because the principal duty, love, is charged upon the husband. But what, one may say, if a wife reverence me not? Never mind, you are to love, fulfill your own duty. For though that which is due from others may not follow, we ought of course to do our duty. This is an example of what I mean. He says, submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of Christ. And what then if another submit not himself? Still obey thou the law of God. Just so, I say, is it also here. Let the wife at least, though she be not loved, still reverence notwithstanding, that nothing may lie at her door; and let the husband, though his wife reverence him not, still show her love notwithstanding, that he himself be not wanting in any point. For each has received his own.

(Chrysostom, “Homily 20 on Ephesians,” emphases added)

“Fulfill your own duty.” Strong words from Chrysostom. The commandment to fulfill the duty here is not necessarily out of a duty to the wife, but is from “fear of Christ.” Recall the first step of St. Benedict’s levels of humility.

Humble Worker

Finally, we turn to humility in work. The most obvious application here is that from St. Benedict: “submit to a superior.” This does not simply mean listening to those who are higher than you, but brings with it no grumbling as well. In the 34th chapter of the Rule:

Above all, let not the evil of murmuring appear for any reason whatsoever in the least word or sign. If any one is caught at it, let him be placed under very severe discipline. (Benedict, The Rule of Saint Benedict, section 34)

So we are talking about not simply doing the work, but doing the work and not complaining. All of us here are competent workers, I take it, and many of us are ascendant in our careers. How can we maintain humility while also recognizing the skills that have developed in our persons?

I think a skilled superior, degree 3 of Benedict’s 12 degrees, is particularly helpful here. Both a spiritual director who understands your work well enough to advise living an integrated life in that work – not compartmentalizing being Catholic, as well as working with and under somebody who is significantly more skilled than oneself to develop your skills in that work.

How else could we apply the Rule in our work?

We also must recognize work, and laboring in our work, as a good thing. Working well is part of humbly submitting to God. We are not transhumanists. We do not strive for the day where there is no work. Pope St. John Paul II in Laborem Exercens:

The Church finds in the very first pages of the Book of Genesis the source of her conviction that work is a fundamental dimension of human existence on earth. An analysis of these texts makes us aware that they express-sometimes in an archaic way of manifesting thought-the fundamental truths about man, in the context of the mystery of creation itself. These truths are decisive for man from the very beginning, and at the same time they trace out the main lines of his earthly existence, both in the state of original justice and also after the breaking, caused by sin, of the Creator's original covenant with creation in man. When man, who had been created "in the image of God.... male and female", hears the words: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it”, even though these words do not refer directly and explicitly to work, beyond any doubt they indirectly indicate it as an activity for man to carry out in the world. Indeed, they show its very deepest essence. Man is the image of God partly through the mandate received from his Creator to subdue, to dominate, the earth. In carrying out this mandate, man, every human being, reflects the very action of the Creator of the universe.

(John Paul II, Laborem Exercens, 4, emphases added)

With these thoughts, I’d like to invite you to a conversation on developing and living out the virtue of humility. How do we adequately take stock of ourselves, our place – especially in the spiritual life – and then bring ourselves low? How do we model this virtue for our children? For our spouses? Our colleagues?