The Garment of Humility

(from private revelation given to Luisa Piccarreta on January 12, 1900)

Finding myself in my usual state, my adorable Jesus came in a pitiful state. He had His hands bound tightly, His face covered with spit, and many people were slapping Him horribly. And He remained quiet, placid, without making one movement or emitting one lament; not even a batting of eyelashes, in order to show that He Himself wanted to suffer these outrages; and this, not only externally, but also internally. What a moving scene, such as to break the hardest hearts! How many things that Face said, with that spit hanging, dirtied with mud! I felt horrified, I trembled, I saw myself all pride before Jesus.

While He was in that appearance, He said to me: “My daughter, only the little ones let themselves be handled as one wants; not those who are little of human reason, but those who are little yet filled with divine reason. I alone can say that I am humble, because in man, that which is said to be humility should rather be called knowledge of self; and one who does not know himself already walks in falsehood.”

Jesus remained silent for a few minutes, and I stayed there, contemplating Him. While I was doing this, I saw a hand carrying a light, which, searching in my interior, in the most intimate hiding places, wanted to see whether the knowledge of myself and love of humiliations, confusions and opprobriums, were present in me. That light found a void in my interior—and I too saw it—which had to be filled with humiliations and confusions, in the example of blessed Jesus. Oh, how many things that light and that holy Face which was before me, made me understand!

I said to myself: “A God, humiliated and confused for love of me, and I, a sinner, without these insignia! A God, stable, firm in bearing so many insults to the point that He does not move, not one bit, to shake that disgusting spit off of Himself. Ah, His interior before God, and His exterior before men are made manifest to me; and yet, if He wanted to free Himself, He could, because it is not the chains that bind Him, but His firm Will, which wants to save mankind at any cost. And I? And I? Where are my humiliations? Where, the firmness, the constancy in doing good for love of my Jesus and for love of my neighbor? Ah, how different we are as victims—myself and Jesus! Ah, we are not similar at all!”

While my little brain was wandering in this, my adorable Jesus told me: “Only My Humanity was filled with opprobriums and humiliations, to the point that they overflowed outside. This is why Heaven and earth tremble before My virtues, and the souls who love Me use My Humanity as a staircase in order to ascend and lap up a few little drops of My virtues. Tell Me now: before My humility, where is yours? I alone can glory is possessing true humility.

“My Divinity, united to My Humanity, could operate prodigies at each step, word and work; yet, I voluntarily constrained Myself within the circle of My Humanity, I showed Myself as the poorest, and I reached the point of mingling with sinners themselves. I could have done the Work of Redemption in very little time, and even with one single word; yet, during the course of many years, with many hardships and sufferings, I wanted to make the miseries of man My own; I wanted to exercise Myself in many different actions, so that man might be completely renewed and divinized, even in the lowest works.

“In fact, once they had been exercised by Me, Who was God and Man, they received new splendor, and remained with the mark of divine works. My Divinity, hidden within My Humanity, wanted to lower Itself to such baseness, subjecting Itself to the course of human actions—while with one single act of My Will I could have created infinite worlds—feeling the miseries and the weaknesses of others as if they were Its own, seeing Itself covered with all the sins of men before Divine Justice, having to pay their penalty at the price of unheard-of pains and with the shedding of all Its Blood…. Thus It exercised continuous acts of profound and heroic humility.

“Oh daughter, here is the immense difference between My humility and the humility of creatures, even that of all of My Saints, which is only a shadow in the face of Mine; because the creature is always a creature and does not know, as I know, how great is the weight of sin. Even though heroic souls, following My example, have offered themselves to suffer the pains of others, their pains are not different from those of the other creatures; they are not new things for them, because they are made of the same clay. Moreover, the mere thought that those pains are the cause of new gains, and that they glorify God, is a great honor for them. Furthermore, the creature is restricted within the circle in which God placed her, and she cannot go out of those limits within which she has been circumscribed by God. Oh, if it were in their power to do or undo things, how many other things they would do—everyone would reach the stars! But My divinized Humanity had no limits, yet It voluntarily constrained Itself within Itself; and this was the braiding of all My works with heroic humility.

“This had been the cause of all evils which inundate the earth—lack of humility; and by exercising this virtue, I was to draw all goods from Divine Justice. Ah, yes, no concessions of graces come from My throne, if not by means of humility, nor can any ticket be received by Me, if it does not carry the signature of humility. No prayer is listened to by My ears, and moves My Heart to compassion, if it is not perfumed by the fragrance of humility. If the creature does not arrive at destroying that seed of honor, of esteem—and this can be destroyed by arriving at loving to be despised, humiliated, confused—she will feel a braiding of thorns around her heart; she will feel a void in her heart which will always bother her, and will render her very dissimilar from My Most Holy Humanity. If she does not arrive at loving humiliations, at the most she will be able to know herself a little bit, but will not shine before Me, clothed with the garment of humility, beautiful and worthy of sympathy.”