De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae
Knowing Your Own Wretchedness
The author calls the reader back to self-knowledge, arguing that only by attending to one's own wretchedness can true compassion be learned.
But let us return to our subject now. If, then, someone who was not wretched made himself wretched — so he could experience what he already knew in some way — how much more should you — and I am not telling you to make yourself what you are not, but to attend to what you truly are, because you really are wretched — and so learn to have pity, since you cannot know this any other way?12
Gentleness Toward the Fallen
Citing Galatians 6:1, the author warns against harsh judgment and urges the spiritual reader to restore the fallen with the same gentleness they would wish for themselves.
Otherwise, if you dwell on your neighbor's wrongdoing and ignore your own, you may be moved not to compassion but to indignation, not to helping but to judging, and in the end not to instructing in a spirit of gentleness but to destroying in a spirit of fury. You who are spiritual, the Apostle says, instruct such a one in a spirit of gentleness.✦ It is the Apostle's counsel — or rather his precept — that you be gentle; that is, that you come to the aid of a sick brother in the same spirit in which you yourself would want to be helped when you are sick.✦ And so that you may know how to be gentle toward someone who has offended, consider yourself — lest you also be tempted.✦
Read the original Latin
Sed iam ad propositum redeamus. Si ergo se miserum fecit, qui miser non erat, ut experiretur quo et ante sciebat, quanto magis tu, non dico ut te facias quod non es, sed ut attendas quod es, quia vere miser es, et sic discas misereri, qui hoc aliter scire non potes?
Ne forte si proximi malum consideres et tuum non attendas, movearis non ad miserationem, sed ad indignationem non ad adiuvandum, sed ad iudicandum, denique non ad instruendum in spiritu lenitatis, sed ad destruendum in spiritu furoris. Vos qui spirituales estis, ait Apostolus, huiusmodi instruite in spiritu lenitatis. Apostoli consilium sive etiam praeceptum est, ut mansueto, id est eo spiritu fratri aegrotanti subvenias, quod tibi vis subveniri cum aegrotas. Et ut scias qualiter erga delinquentem mansuescere possis : Considerans, inquit, te ipsum, ne et tu tenteris.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Gal.6.1 — Brothers and sisters, even if someone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual should restore such a person in a spirit of gentleness, watching yourself, lest you too be tempted.
- ↩Matt.7.12 — Therefore, whatever you want people to do to you, do also to them; for this is the Law and the Prophets.
- ↩Gal.6.1 — Brothers and sisters, even if someone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual should restore such a person in a spirit of gentleness, watching yourself, lest you too be tempted.
Notes
- 1 ↩quo (token 11): relative/interrogative ambiguity — rendered as 'in some way' to capture the experiential sense of 'in what condition' without resolving the syntactic ambiguity.
- 2 ↩The argument moves from a hypothetical case (one who was not wretched making himself wretched) to the reader's actual condition, pressing self-knowledge as the path to compassion for others.
De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae (On the Steps of Humility and Pride) companion
Humility is climbed one day at a time
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