An old man was asked, ‘What is humility?’ He replied, ‘It is when your brother sins against you and you forgive him before he comes to ask for forgiveness.‘ ” ~ From the Desert Fathers.
When blessed Antony was praying in his cell, a voice spoke to him, saying,“Antony, you have not yet come to the measure of the the tanner who is in Alexandria.” When he heard this, the old man arose and took his stick and hurried into the city. When he had found the tanner…he said to him, “Tell me about your work, for today I have left the desert and come here to see you.”
He replied, “I am not aware that I have done anything good. When I get up in the morning, before I sit down to work, I say that the whole of this city, small and great, will go into the Kingdom of God because of their good deeds, while I alone will go into eternal punishment because of my evil deeds. Every evening I repeat the same words and believe them in my heart.”
When blessed Antony heard this he said, “My son, you sit in your own house and work well, and you have the peace of the Kingdom of God; but i spend all my time in solitude with no distractions, and i have not come near the measure of such words.”
So, if a man lacks extreme humility, if he is not humble with all his heart, all his mind, all his spirit, all his soul and body – he will not inherit the kingdom of God. St Anthony the Great,
“Early Fathers From the Philokalia,” by E. Kadloubovsky and GEH Palmer, (London: Faber and Faber, 1954), pp. 45-46
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