Francis always mentioned humility in the same breath with poverty. In a sense, they are the same: personally doing without. This is a fact, because all that we have is from God. This is an ideal, because we want to be without everything but God. Some of the most striking things Francis said concern humility: “A man is what he is in the sight of God and nothing more.” “The better a man really is, the worse he feels himself to be.” The more we appreciate God’s gifts and unending generosity, the more we become conscious of refusing to admit this and spoiling God’s precious gifts.
As with St. Paul, the only thing Francis would take pride in was the “cross of Christ.”
—from Franciscan Media’s “Humility: The Twin of Poverty”
by Jovian Weigel, OFM
