Why humility is essential to receive any grace from God

If we are prideful and full of ourselves, there will be no room for God to dwell in our hearts.

Among all the virtues that we could hope to attain, humility is the greatest and most necessary to the spiritual life.

Humility is the bedrock of all other virtues and opens us up to the innumerable graces that God wants to give to us.

Empty vessels

St. Francis de Sales explains the importance of humility in his Introduction to the Devout Life:

Elisha bade the poor widow “borrow vessels, even empty vessels not a few, and pour oil into all those vessels;” and so in order to receive God’s Grace in our hearts, they must be as empty vessels—not filled with self-esteem.

He then illustrates this truth by comparing humility to the activity of a swallow and a dove:

The swallow with its sharp cry and keen glance has the power of frightening away birds of prey, and for that reason the dove prefers it to all other birds, and lives surely beside it;—even so humility drives Satan away, and cherishes the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit within us, and for that reason all the Saints—and especially the King of Saints and His Blessed Mother—have always esteemed the grace of humility above all other virtues.

St. Francis de Sales believed humility was the greatest test of someone’s word. If a person is not humble, it is nearly impossible to trust them:

So if you want to know whether a man is really wise, learned, generous or noble, see if his life is moulded by humility, modesty and submission. If so, his gifts are genuine; but if they are only surface and showy, you may be sure that in proportion to their demonstrativeness so is their unreality. Those pearls which are formed amid tempest and storm have only an outward shell, and are hollow within; and so when a man’s good qualities are fed by pride, vanity and boasting, they will soon have nothing save empty show, without sap, marrow or substance.

God wants to give to us many graces, but we can easily prevent those graces from resting within us by our own pride.

We need to realize that we can do nothing without God and any great things we accomplish in life are due to God’s grace.

If we want to be united with God, we need to empty ourselves out and make room for him.