Humility’s True Greatness
When the disciples were arguing about greatness, our Lord, that master of humility, took a little child, saying: Whosoever of you shall not have been converted and become as a little child cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. And that he might not seem merely to teach this and not do it, he fulfilled the precept by example when he washed the disciples’ feet, when he received his betrayer with a kiss, when he spoke with the Samaritan woman, when he discussed the Kingdom of heaven as Mary sat at his feet, when he rose from the dead and appeared first to mere women.
Moreover, Satan fell from the height of the archangels for no other reason save pride—the opposite of humility. And [those who], because they claimed for themselves the chief seats and greetings in the market place, [were] succeeded by the people…who had previously been accounted as a drop of a bucket. Likewise Peter and James, the fishermen, were sent to oppose the sophists of their time and the wise men of this world, wherefore the Scripture says: God resists the proud, but to the humble he gives grace.
Saint Jerome
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