Oops!
When we hear Jesus say, “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted,” what do we really hear?
In our modern world—especially here in the Midwest—many of us instinctively associate humility with obedience, with keeping quiet, with not making waves. Humility sounds like the virtue of the agreeable.
We’ve all met that Minnesota-nice version of humility—soft-spoken, conflict-averse, deferential. It’s the kind of “humility” that keeps us from speaking up when something is wrong, or when authority misuses power. In that sense, humility can sound like the tool of the powerful—a way of keeping others small.
But Jesus shatters this comfortable notion. After all, the same Jesus who tells us to humble ourselves also overturned tables in the temple. The same Jesus who was silent before Pilate also called the Pharisees “whitewashed tombs.”
So … what kind of humility is Jesus talking about today?
Ugh!
The Pharisee in today’s parable is not a monster. He’s a good man, religiously devout, honest, disciplined, and generous. But he suffers from a peculiar spiritual blindness—he’s so busy cataloging his virtues that he’s lost sight of God.
He stands in the temple and thanks God, but who he’s really worshiping is himself.
He says, “I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all I possess.” In other words: Look how well I’m doing. Look at how spiritual I am.
The publican, meanwhile, can’t even raise his eyes. He’s broken open by truth. He says only: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
And Jesus says that man went home justified.
Why? Because the Pharisee lives in illusion, while the publican lives in reality. And humility—true humility—is simply living in truth.
Aha!
The Fathers teach that humility is not a moral performance. It’s not thinking poorly of yourself, nor is it being silent before human authority.
Humility is seeing yourself as you truly are before God.
St. Isaac the Syrian says,
“Humility is the raiment of the Godhead. The Word who became man clothed Himself in it” (Homily 77, The Ascetical Homilies).
In other words, humility is divine. It’s the garment Christ wore in His Incarnation—the very form of His self-emptying love.
St. Maximus the Confessor says humility is what allows the soul to become “transparent to God”—a soul so clear of self-concern that grace can shine through unobstructed. The proud heart is cloudy, always looking at itself; the humble heart is clear, open, receptive. Only such a heart can be filled with grace (Centuries on Love, Fourth Century, 70).
And St. John Climacus writes:
“Humility is a nameless grace of the soul, known only by those who have learned it through experience” (The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 25).
It can’t be faked. It’s the quiet freedom that comes when the ego no longer needs to defend, compare, or control.
So humility isn’t passivity—it’s clarity. It’s not self-hatred—it’s self-forgetfulness. It’s the posture of the soul that allows God to be God in us.
Whee!
And that’s the Good News: Christ Himself is humility.
He “emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant” (Phil. 2). He entered our darkness, our weakness, our death—not to keep us small, but to lift us into divine life.
When we humble ourselves, we are not groveling. We are consenting to live in reality—the reality that God is God and we are not, that every breath is gift, that every good thing comes from above.
And far from shrinking the soul; humility expands it. It removes the walls of pride that keep God out.
And once pride is gone, we become free—free to speak truth to power without ego, free to love those who wound us, free to stand in the temple not as performers, but as persons in communion with God.
That’s why the humble are exalted—not because they’ve earned a reward, but because their hearts are finally open enough for God to lift them.
Yeah!
So what does this mean for us this week?
It means humility is not silence before corruption; it’s silence before the truth.
It’s the quiet courage to say, “God, be merciful to me,” even when everything in us wants to defend our righteousness.
It means we stop living by comparison—”I’m not like other men”—and start living by communion: “Have mercy on us.”
The humble person doesn’t look down or up.
He looks inward and Godward.
And that humility—real humility—will change how we pray, how we speak, how we serve. Because the soul that bows down in truth is the soul God can lift up in glory.
In the end, humility is not about being small. It’s about being real.
And when we live in truth, God exalts us—not with worldly power, but with the radiant life of His Son.
Amen.