ghts on herself and on God, and all her
strength and affections in aspiring after him. Thus, St. Benedict dwelt
with himself, being always busied in the presence of his Creator, in
bewailing the spiritual miseries of {638} his soul and past sins, in
examining into the disorders of his affections, in watching over his
senses, and the motions of his heart, and in a constant attention to the
perfection of his state, and the contemplation of divine things. This
last occupied his soul in the sweet exercises of divine love and praise;
but the first-mentioned exercises, or the consideration of himself, and
of his own nothingness and miseries, laid the foundation by improving in
him continually the most profound spirit of humility and compunction.
The twelve degrees of humility, which he lays down in his Rule,[15] are
commended by St. Thomas Aquinas.[16] The first is a deep compunction of
heart, and holy fear of God and his judgments, with a constant attention
to walk in the divine presence, sunk under the weight of this confusion
and fear. 2. The perfect renunciation of our own will. 3. Ready
obedience. 4. Patience under all sufferings and injuries. 5. The
manifestation of our thoughts and designs to our superior or director.
6. To be content, and to rejoice, in all humiliations; to be pleased
with mean employments, poor clothes, &c., to love simplicity and
poverty, (which he will have among monks, to be extended even to the
ornaments of the altar,) and to judge ourselves unworthy, and bad
servants in every thing that is enjoined us. 7. Sincerely to esteem
ourselves baser and more unworthy than every one, even the greatest
sinners.[17] 8. To avoid all love of singularity in words or actions. 9.
To love and practise silence. 10. To avoid dissolute mirth and loud
laughter. 11. Never to speak with a loud voice, and to be modest in our
words. 12. To be humble in all our exterior actions, by keeping our eyes
humbly cast down with the publican,[18] and the penitent Manasses.[19]
St. Benedict adds, that divine love is the sublime recompense of sincere
humility, and promises, upon the warrant of the divine word, that God
will raise that soul to perfect charity, which, faithfully walking in
these twelve degrees, shall have happily learned true humility.
Elsewhere he calls obedience with delay the first degree of
humility,[20] but means the first among the exterior degrees; for he
places before it interior compunction of soul, and the ren