Jesus’ Eucharistic Humility
Here begins the first virtue in this series of Jesus’ Eucharistic Virtues: humility. It is appropriate to start with the virtue of humility, for the saints call it the foundation of the spiritual life. St. Peter Julian Eymard, “the Apostle of the Eucharist,” describes Jesus’ Eucharistic humility with these words:
Our Lord comes without pomp or majesty. On the altar, under the Eucharistic veils, He has the air of one who no longer has even a being. Is this sufficient abasement?
Thus to abase Himself, Our Lord employs all His power. By a prodigy He sustains these accidents. He overturns all the laws of nature in order to humble Himself. Who could envelop the sun with a cloud sufficiently dense to intercept its light and heat? That would be the greatest of miracles. But Our Lord did so in His Own Person. Under the Eucharistic Species, which in themselves are so insignificant, so ordinary. He, glorious and luminous, is hidden. He is God! O do not let us put Our Lord to shame, because He is so humiliated, so little!1
In the Eucharist, Jesus makes of humility His royal virtue; it becomes His royal mantle, as it were, the form of all His actions, the habitual exercise of His love, His perpetual sacrifice of praise to the heavenly Father. It veils His glory, His majesty, His power, His unceasing action in souls, and leaves in evidence only His poverty and weakness, His nothingness as a human creature, His love as our Savior. A eucharistic soul must reproduce in herself the humility of Jesus-Hostia, doing in reality and out of virtue what Jesus, glorious and triumphant, continues to do in His sacramental state.2
Our Lord must be honored and through the virtue which He manifests in the Blessed Sacrament. Now then, what virtue does He practice and teach there constantly and visibly, to all, even to the most ignorant? Humility: He is more humiliated there than in His birth, in His life, even His death. Here His annihilation veils and entombs everything, His divinity, His humanity, His words, and His actions. If then you want to honor Him, as is the essential duty of your vocation, honor Him in His condition of humility, imitate Him in what He is. He has descended lower than man, lower than a slave, lower than the least of animated beings, since He is a thing, an appearance of bread destined to be eaten and destroyed. Come down to His level.3
But there are two motives and two ways to practice humility: one comes from the realization of our sinfulness, and the other from our love of Jesus Christ humiliated. The first type is negativehumility; the second is positive. Both types are found in humility of the mind and in humility of the heart.4
How may we acquire this virtue? All we have to do is to enter into the mind of our Lord, to see and consult Him, to act under the influence of Jesus humbled out of love in His Sacrament and preferring this obscure state to all glory.5
Scripture paints a clear picture of Jesus’ virtues: loving, humble, meek, merciful, patient, and just. Yet, we can only truly see their full manifestation when we gaze upon the Holy Eucharist, especially concerning the virtue of humility. Many of us have been inspired by a saint or historical figure. Their lives challenge us to become more virtuous. Perhaps we even wish we could have met them and asked them to impart their wisdom to us. Unfortunately, this is not possible. However, with Jesus, it is possible.
