A forgotten virtue – Humility

Growing up in Limerick, close by the Dominican church, our go-to saint was St Martin de Porres. So, it was a particularly memorable for me to visit Lima in Peru last week on pilgrimage. Together with another Dominican priest and 35 pilgrims we visited the ‘City of the Kings’, as Lima was known at the time of St Martin in memory of the Magi.

We visited the priory where the saintly Lay-brother lived and died. We celebrated Mass at his tomb and knelt by the bed in the room in which he died on November 3, 1639. I was totally unaware that the place of his birth is still preserved, so we were able to make the 10-minute walk to the house his mother was working at when she gave birth to Martin and prayed in the actual room in which he was born. That house is now a place for feeding the poor and welcoming people in need. Just across from that house is the home of St Rose of Lima.

We joined the local Dominican community for the feast (the feast in now celebrated in Ireland on November 5 as St Malachy is celebrated on the 3rd in the Irish liturgical calendar) where we were treated like long lost cousins. On the Sunday we witnessed one of the 150 processions held in Lima in St Martin’s honour during November.

It has always puzzled me why St Martin, or as he was popularly known until 1962 Blessed Martin, was such a popular saint for the Irish. Was it his love of animals… the fact that he was the underdog socially and people felt he would understand their troubles…?

However, I tell you all this because of someone I met while in Lima. As part of our trip to Peru we visited the Inca capital of Cusco and from there we travelled to the breath-taking ancient city of Machu Picchu, one of the wonders of the world. At the airport I got talking to a young man who was going to Cusco to make the famous hike to Machu Picchu. At the airport, we were in the same queue and seeing the roman collar he took the opportunity to ask questions to a priest.

Over a beer, he told me his story and why he had stopped practicing his Catholic religion at the age of ten. He recounted how the parish priest had embarrassed his family for being late for Mass and the whole family never returned. In the midst of our chat, he said how he had been a very angry young man but in his mid-twenties he came to the conclusion that being angry all the time was not a way of life. One day he decided to focus not on the negatives in his life but rather the positives. He made the decision to practice being grateful. He said he was now a freer man because he was filled with gratitude.

Thinking over that ‘chance meeting’ I think I got an insight in St Martin’s secret. St Martin was always filled with gratitude. Maybe the source of his humility was not the circumstances of his birth or how he suffered from racism, but rather his profound sense of gratitude to God and to all that was good in his life.

As I came away from Lima it was the words of that young man that made the deepest impression on me. Maybe I need to decide to be a man filled with gratitude and become truly humble. God works in strange ways to wake us up.

Examine your conscience

One of my fellow pilgrims told me how she has taken a leaf out of one of the late Cardinal Ratzinger’s books. Seemingly he wrote that instead of going through the 10 commandments when examining one’s conscience one should use the Beatitudes. Am I a peace maker? Am I pure of heart? Am I merciful? Am I humble and meek (grateful)? Do I seek to be just? How do I react when people offend me or slight me? How do I cope when I am sad or lonely?