Humility is a virtue. So is manliness or virility (c.f. St. Catherine of Siena). How does one progress in both equally without one of them swallowing up the other thus sliding over from the golden mean to the extreme of a vice?
For example, a colleague or superior treats you like dirt in public, simply because he is like that. Do you swallow the insult and practice humility? Are you then enabling a bully? Or do you stand up for yourself and risk falling into the passion (here used in the sense that the Greek & Syriac Church Fathers and the Orthodox Christians use it; in the Latin Church and for us Roman Catholics, passion simply means emotion and is not in itself a sin) of Anger?
Christ expresses a mild protest when he is slapped in the presence of the High Priest, but thereafter meekly allows himself to be tortured and crucified. So what does this teach us?
Perhaps committing oneself to humility and clarity also takes care of virility?
Or perhaps, since humility is the wellspring of virtue (Dietrich von Hildebrand has a book by this title, which is actually a chapter from his longer book Transformation in Christ), those that focus on cultivating humility will receive virility added unto the grace of humility?
Perhaps Transformation in Christ has the answer. I've still not got this figured out.
Or perhaps the answer is something like the following? "Try to keep your prayer rule and do the good at hand. Allow Christ to war against the enemy with a hidden hand in your heart, and without you knowing it, your sanctification will have been accomplished."
For example, a colleague or superior treats you like dirt in public, simply because he is like that. Do you swallow the insult and practice humility? Are you then enabling a bully? Or do you stand up for yourself and risk falling into the passion (here used in the sense that the Greek & Syriac Church Fathers and the Orthodox Christians use it; in the Latin Church and for us Roman Catholics, passion simply means emotion and is not in itself a sin) of Anger?
Christ expresses a mild protest when he is slapped in the presence of the High Priest, but thereafter meekly allows himself to be tortured and crucified. So what does this teach us?
Perhaps committing oneself to humility and clarity also takes care of virility?
Or perhaps, since humility is the wellspring of virtue (Dietrich von Hildebrand has a book by this title, which is actually a chapter from his longer book Transformation in Christ), those that focus on cultivating humility will receive virility added unto the grace of humility?
Perhaps Transformation in Christ has the answer. I've still not got this figured out.
Or perhaps the answer is something like the following? "Try to keep your prayer rule and do the good at hand. Allow Christ to war against the enemy with a hidden hand in your heart, and without you knowing it, your sanctification will have been accomplished."
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