Humility Rules

By Augustine Wetta

Step 1: Fear of God: In thought, in word, and in deed,

- “be careful that you don’t wind up sliding into a comfortable familiarity that drives out
respect.”
- Fear and love must go together.
- “Therefore, your work—whether it is a chore around the house, a homework assignment,
a sports practice, or a job with an office and a paycheck—isn’t just a means to an
economic end. Nor is it something you need to “get over with” in time for the weekend. It
is an essential part of your sanctification, a share in the divine brotherhood of Christ, and
a means of discovering your true self. ”

Step 2: Self-denial
- “What feels best for you may not be best for the people around you.”
- “self-fulfillment is not about self-satisfaction”
- “all of us love the rules when they are easy to follow, but make excuses as soon as they
become difficult. Saint Benedict doesn’t have much patience for this kind of behavior. He
utterly despises the do-it-yourselfers who make up their own rules as they go—or worse
yet, follow only the rules that coincide with what they are already doing. And Jesus
wasn’t patient with phonies either. ”

“our dignity as human persons does not rely on our words, talents, achievements, or test scores.
It doesn’t even depend on our virtue.”

Step 3: Obedience
“Obedience is what saves us from following the wrong dreams.”
“You have to be humble enough to admit there is someone in the world smarter than yourself.”
“Nevertheless, the hallmark of a really strong soul is the ability to be joyful even when the going
gets tough, because a good reason doesn’t make grumbling, which is a form of ingratitude, less
wicked.”

“Monks aren’t just obedient to their abbot, they are obedient to one another as well—and in
particular to their elders. This goes way beyond doing what they’re told and requires enormous
amounts of patience.”

Step 4: Perseverance

“Fidelity in the midst of failure is called perseverance.”

“The key to perseverance is keeping your eyes on the goal. For every Christian, that goal lies just
beyond the gates of death. Our true citizenship is in the only place where we will truly feel at
home: Heaven (Phil 3:20)”
“It is better to do nothing than to do it with murmuring, for even the very thing itself is spoilt. . . .
For murmuring is intolerable, most intolerable; it borders upon blasphemy. . . . It is a proof of
ingratitude; the murmurer is ungrateful to God.”
If you want to be holy, happy, and humble, avoid grumbling above all else.”
“You must go out and be a witness of peace and stability to a culture that has lost its balance—to
show others how to fill that emptiness. ”

Step 5: Repentance
“Perseverance is valuable only if you are doing something good. Otherwise, what you need is
repentance, because if what you are doing is bad or stupid, you need to be willing to quit—or at
least to ask for help.”
“For nothing is hidden that shall not be made manifest, nor anything secret that shall not be
known and come to light” (Lk 8:17).

Different religions call this by different names: “karma”, “tao”, “the law of consequences” . . .
Even science has a name for it—Newton’s Third Law: “For every action, there is an equal and
opposite reaction.” So instead of letting the world fall to pieces, set it right again by repenting of
your sins. After all, much more is on the line than your own soul.”

“Whether it is a big sin or a little sin, the important thing is that you come right out and talk
about it, because there’s nothing worse for a spiritual wound than to cover it up.”

“Never water down an apology with an excuse. If you’ve done wrong, own up to it. In fact, even
if you haven’t done wrong, find a way to make amends. ”

Step 6: Serenity
- “When ill treatment comes your way, try to accept it. Learn to be content with the low
liest and worst of everything, and in all that is demanded of you.
- Every insult is an opportunity to practice the art of serenity.
- “a capacity for joy even under the most trying conditions”
- “ Every sorrow loses its sting, because everything is an opportunity to glorify God.”
- “Once you have learned to find contentment in adversity, all of life becomes charged
with light and hope and joy.
- “You can’t be serene and resentful at the same time. ”
- “Forgiveness is an act of the will, so whether you feel like it or not, you have in fact
forgiven your enemies the moment you ask God for the strength to do so. The feelings
will follow later, and so will the serenity.
- “When we start to chase after pleasures, we confuse our priorities and become “lovers of
pleasure rather than lovers of God” (2 Tim 3:4).
“Everyone comes to a point in his life when he must choose between fun and joy. ” “And to
choose the former over the latter leads to a whole lot of emptiness. “When it comes to the bigger
life decisions, we must have the wisdom to choose joy, no matter how fun the alternative.”

Step 7: Self-abasement
- “It is the practice of reminding ourselves that we are nothing without God’s grace and
will never earn it.”
 - “It’s like standing next to a sky-scraper: The closer you stand, the smaller you feel. This
explains why really holy people are often the last ones to admit it, because the holier they
get, the less holy they feel ”
- “True self-esteem, therefore, is always accompanied by self-abasement because knowing
your limits is so crucial to knowing yourself. ”
- “The discerning man who acknowledges his limitations is not far off perfection.”3 The
truth is that we are all sick with sin and Jesus is the only cure.

- “Self-abasement is not self-deprecation, but self-knowledge. ”

- “It is a sign of humility if a man does not think too much of himself,” wrote Thomas
Aquinas, “but if a man condemns the good things he has received from God, this, far
from being a proof of humility, shows him to be ungrateful.”
- “There are no great deeds. Only small deeds with great love.” For “Whatever you do, you
can do it for the glory of God.
- “It’s not easy, but if you want to cultivate a genuine sense of self-esteem, you must learn
to recognize these little acts of self-abasement for what they are: big opportunities to
cultivate humility.”

Step 8: Prudence (181)

- “your thoughts should be wholly directed to whatever is true, honorable, just, pure,
lovely, gracious, excellent, and worthy of praise (Phil 4:8)”
- “Feel free to do anything you could brag about to your mom. Would your mother
approve? If so, then you are probably good to go.
- “Even compassion can do harm when you show it in the wrong way.
- “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except
from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God” (Rom 13:1).”
- “In other words, you don’t help a sick person when you encourage his sickness. So in a
situation like this, the prudent response is to pray. Come to think of it, prayer is always
the most prudent response to anything.

Step 9: Silence
 - For Saint Benedict, there is no such thing as an awkward silence. Instead, he sees every
moment of quiet as an opportunity to listen to God.”
- “You can’t force people to listen to you, but you would be surprised how open they
become once they are convinced that you are listening to them.”
- “When you meet a wise person, listen to him and you will learn wisdom; when you meet
a foolish person, listen to him and you will learn patience; when you are alone, listen to
God, and you will learn everything else.”
- “Silence is so important to monks that they don’t even talk while they are eating. ”

- “In my monastery, we have special signs for milk, water, bread, butter, starch, salt,
pepper, and so on. The sign for water is three fingers. The sign for starch is a closed fist.
We even have a sign for ketchup, which we make by dragging the right forefinger across
the left wrist. It’s weird, but it works. And it shows that we really mean it when we say
that silence is precious.
- “You may be sharp, but give credit where credit is due. And if you want your creation to
last, don’t build it around yourself. Build it around Christ (1 Cor 3:11).

Step 10: Dignity

- “Saint Benedict wants his monks to be very careful with their sense of humor. Laughter
can be life-affirming, but it can also break people down, filling their heads with vulgar or
cruel images.”
- “There is a line that can be crossed when you tell a joke, and it is often difficult to know
exactly where that line is. ”
- “so just because your friend is laughing along, that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s feeling
all right. What’s more, some jokes are simply beneath your dignity.2
- “Just as undignified humor and excessive laughter are symptoms of spiritual illness, so is
immoderate drinking”
- “Video games, texting, and television—even dieting and exercise can evolve into
something destructive.

Step 11: Discretion

 - “it’s better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all
doubt. But there are occasions when you simply must speak up. At times like these, you
need to have a well-formed sense of discretion.”
- “You don’t judge people when they’re in the wrong, but you don’t judge them when
they’re in the right either. ”….. “Above all, discretion means knowing when to keep your
opinion to yourself.
- “Saint Benedict says that a monk shouldn’t be quick to laugh. But he shouldn’t be quick
to lash out either.”
- “Pray for the gift of discernment.

Step 12: Reverence

- “Prayer is a way of “calling home”. It keeps you in touch with your Father and in touch
with your spiritual community. “Draw near to God,” writes Saint James, “and he will
draw near to you” (Jas 4:8).
- “Let the name of Jesus be that silver bell for you—a reminder of who you are, where you
stand, and what you stand for. Then, in the midst of all the chaos of life, when you start to
feel lost, just whisper that name, and it will bring you back to yourself.”
- “Prayer, you see, is fundamentally an act of justice. ”
- “When we neglect our prayers, we are actually cheating God out of something that is His
due.
- “Holiness must be the first priority in your life, because who cares how hard you work if,
at the end of the day, you are still the same lousy person you were when you started?”
- “Like any other form of employment, prayer has to be done consistently. ”

CONCLUSION:

- “it is not enough ‘just to be a good person’. That’s the least you can do. That’s the
minimum. Think about it. What’s the alternative? You’re expected to be a good person.
But God wants you and me to be saints—to live lives of heroic virtue—to give and give
and give until it hurts!”
 - “My point is that humility should never be confused with mediocrity. Perfect holiness is
the purpose for which we were created, so we can’t allow ourselves to be comfortable
with the status quo. The minimum is not enough.
- “Everyone to whom much is given, of him much will be required”

“Who Was Saint Benedict?

Right around the beginning of the sixth century, there lived a teenager who was bored with
school. He was at the top of his class. His father was wealthy and influential. This was a smart,
charismatic kid, and he seemed destined for greatness. But he hated school.
It wasn’t that he had anything against learning; he just felt like he was wasting his time. He was
training to go into politics, but the world seemed to be going down the tubes. There were gangs

of kids armed to the teeth in the street; there were endless, bloody wars being fought all over the
world; and there was a sudden influx of terrible diseases for which there were no cures. There
were scandals in politics and scandals in the Church. In short, the world was a mess.
So he ran away. But he didn’t join the circus or find his fortune in The Big City. Instead, he went
to live in a cave on the side of a mountain. There, without all the distractions of family and
schoolwork and social life, he figured he could focus exclusively on holiness. He was thinking
specifically of Christ’s words: “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and . . . follow
me” (Mt 19:21). He wanted to take those words literally.
Saint Benedict spent the next three years just praying. Ironically, all this praying made him
famous. People started to come to him for advice. The next thing he knew, there were hundreds
of guys living in the same mountains, trying to do the same thing. Folks even invented a name
for them: the monakhoi—the “lonely men”—or, in modern English, “monks”. But each monk
seemed to have his own way of doing things, with the result that
there was a whole lot of chaos and not a lot of prayer going on. So a bunch of them got together
and came to Benedict as a group. “Teach us how to be real monks,” they said.
So Saint Benedict wrote a handbook. It was chock full of great advice, from who should
apologize after an argument, to how many times a day you should pray, to what you ought to do
with old underwear, and whether you should sleep while wearing a knife. It was so useful, in
fact, that within a hundred years, virtually every monastery in Europe adopted it. We know it
today as The Rule of Saint Benedict, and it is used by monasteries all over the world, from Saint
Louis Abbey in Missouri to Ndanda Abbey in Tanzania to Tupazy Abbey in Paraguay to Saint
Willibrord’s Abbey in the Netherlands. In all, there are more than twelve hundred monasteries
and twenty-five thousand Benedictines worldwide. I’m one of them.

Who Is Augustine Wetta?

I knew a monk who used to say, “Enough of me talking about me. What do you think of me?”
For good reason, monks tend to be reluctant to sound their own praises. The core of monastic
spirituality is humility, and humility is hard to square with autobiography. Still, if you are going
to spend time reading what I have to say, I can understand why you might want to know a thing
or two about where I come from. So here is my story:
I grew up on an island in the Gulf of Mexico. My family belonged to a wonderful parish with a
brilliant and energetic pastor named Paul Chovanec. I decided I wanted to grow up and be just
like him. But around thirteen, I discovered girls and changed my mind. Also about that time, my
mother insisted on sending me to Theater Camp, which was where I learned to be a nerd—or at
any rate perfected my natural talent. Juggling caught my imagination and turned out to be an
easy way to earn a quick buck. Two years later, I started a business with my best friend. We
called ourselves “The Flying Fettuccine Brothers”. For $75 an hour, we hired ourselves out as
performers at birthday parties, grand openings, street festivals—you name it. We did the whole
thing: bowling balls, clubs, torches, machetes, unicycles

“At sixteen, I decided I didn’t want to be a nerd anymore and learned to surf. The whole
direction of my life changed. I still juggled whenever I needed cash, and I think my peers
generally agreed that I was still a nerd, but my life began to revolve around the water. I joined
the swim team, tried out for the Beach Patrol, and began a slightly more serious phase of my life.
On the Beach Patrol I came face to face with death—and more than once.
I was a good student and attended Rice University, where I majored in classics. I joined the
rugby team and broke a bunch of bones. I also spent a semester overseas in Rome, where I
studied archaeology and learned Italian. There I encountered my first Benedictine monastery.
The monks turned out to be surprisingly interesting people, and I kept in touch with several of
them. When I moved to Saint Louis to go to graduate school, they told me there was a monastery
nearby. I dropped in for a visit and fell in love with the place. One thing led to another. I decided
to spend a summer with the monks. “Then I decided to leave graduate school and join Saint
Louis Abbey instead.

“The rest is history, as they say. I went to seminary, earned a few more degrees (two in theology
at Oxford, one in English at Middlebury College), and was ordained. Now I spend my life doing
what the abbot tells me. I teach high school English, classics, and theology. I coach rugby, help
train new monks, and write books like this one. But most of all, I try to be holy. Which brings us
to humility.”