Blending humility with magnanimity and magnificence

WE have to be clear about the intimate relation between the virtues of humility, magnanimity and magnificence. Often these virtues are understood as somehow opposed to each other.

Humility is often understood as projecting a low profile, hidden, passive and kind of indifferent to the things around, especially the big, raging issues of the times. While magnanimity and magnificence are regarded as being showy, ostentatious, intrusive, extravagant, etc.

This need not be the case. If they are understood well and are based on the real foundation of what is good, these virtues actually have an intimate and mutual relation. Unless one is humble, he can hardly be magnanimous and capable of doing big things. And one can truly be magnanimous and magnificent if first of all he is humble. They always go together.

And the key to blending them together is to follow Christ who, as the gospel reading for the Mass of Monday of the 5th Week of Easter tells us, said, “Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. Whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.” (Jn 14,21)

And what did Christ reveal to us that would show us the close relationship between humility, on the one hand, and magnanimity and magnificence, on the other? It is this: that He being God made himself man and went all the way to offer his life for all our sins. There is no greater humility than this!

And because of that, he carried out the most magnanimous and magnificent enterprise for all time: the salvation of mankind. There can be no greater magnanimity and magnificence than that!

With Christ, the greatness of God is lived in the ordinary things of life as shown in his hidden life. He was known to be a carpenter. And even during his public life, he made it clear that he was there to serve and not to be served.

He even went to the extent of washing the feet of the apostles at the Last Supper. And when some people wanted to carry him on their shoulders out of their immense admiration for him, he eluded them. He also rode on a donkey instead of some throne on his way to his supreme act of love for us—his death on the cross!

And yet that greatness is not limited in that level of the ordinary and the hidden. Once he started his public life, Christ went around many places preaching and performing miracles, clarifying and correcting things despite severe opposition by some parties, until he completed his mission by offering his life on the cross to conquer sin and death and gain our redemption.

We need to train ourselves to have the very mind and spirit of Christ to be able to blend these virtues of humility, magnanimity and magnificence. This, of course, is going to be a tricky thing, given our erratic human condition. But that’s the challenge we have to face. And we can feel confident that we can hack it because God will always give us his grace if we also do our part.

Let’s see to it that our humility does not prevent us from doing great and heroic things. And that our magnanimity and magnificence should spring from the humble recognition that everything comes from God, and not just from ourselves!