Ladder of Humility

Insights from the Rule of St. Benedict

In The Wisdom of the Desert, Thomas Merton points out that the early monks who sought solitude in the wilderness “insisted on remaining human and ‘ordinary.’ This may seem to be a paradox, but it is very important. If we reflect a moment, we will see that to fly into the desert in order to be extraordinary is only to carry the world with you as an implicit standard of comparison. The result would be nothing but self-contemplation, and self-comparison with the negative standard of the world one had abandoned.”¹ It is true. And it’s still true today. In our world, everyone seems to be fixated on being extraordinary. Everyone has something to do, say, or prove to corroborate their extraordinariness. But, if everyone is extraordinary, then no one is.

The monks wanted to be ordinary men, real human beings. This is a task placed before every generation, including our own. In this regard, Merton argues that “we must liberate ourselves, in our own way, from involvement in a world that is plunging into disaster. But our world is different from theirs [monks of the first generation]. Our involvement in it is more complete. Our danger is far more desperate…We cannot do exactly what they did. But we must be as thorough and as ruthless in our determination to break all spiritual chains, and cast off the domination of alien compulsions, to find our true selves.”²

Because the monks sought to become ordinary men, they longed to realize their humanity. This is to say, they wanted nothing other than to rediscover their dependence. Luigi Giussani calls this discovery the real mark of maturity in his classic The Religious Sense: “I do not make myself . . . I do not give myself being . . . I am ‘given.’ This is the moment of maturity when I discover myself to be dependent on something else.” The word “depend” literally means: to hang from, to be suspended by, to rely upon. In order to realize one’s dependence, everything extraordinary needs to be cleared away. It’s an excavation project. It’s a process of humility. Becoming humble. To become humble means to become human again, to become ordinary.³

St. Benedict’s Ladder

In his Rule, St. Benedict of Nursia proposes a ladder of humility. Really, it’s Jesus’ ladder. It’s simply a reflection on Luke 14:11, which says, “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” Contrary to ascending today’s ladder of success — which usually involves displays of ego, politics, utility, defamation, ingenuity, and excessive amounts of self-interest — to ascend St. Benedict’s ladder, the self must descend. Dom Pius Mary Noonan, OSB, explains:

Any spirituality that is not based on authentic humility and does not put all its trust in God, is only a form of pride, and if we climb that ladder, we will find ourselves at the bottom of the abyss of hell, whereas if we strive to go down in our esteem and in that of others, we will find that when we reach the last rung of the ladder, that we have actually risen to the greatest heights. And so it is clear that humility is not only for monks.⁴

Though St. Benedict’s Rule was written for monks and his ladder of humility has monks in mind, humility is not only for monks and the ladder has something to say to those who aren’t monks. The ladder is a kind of guide for the person who wants to be an ordinary human again — or who wants to remain human.

Briefly in this post, I would like to summarize the rungs of the ladder of humility, the complete text of which can be found in chapter seven of The Rule of St. Benedict. If you are interested in going deeper, I highly recommend Dom Noonan’s commentary titled The Grace to Desire It: Meditations on St Benedict’s Twelve Degrees of Humility.

The Twelve Rungs of Humility

I want to preface my brief commentary on the ladder of humility by pointing out that the steps, rungs, degrees, or what have you, do not necessarily function in a perfectly airtight or linear manner. Like the “steps” of Lectio Divina, there is a fair amount of “play” within the ladder, which may not be traversed chronologically, so to speak.

1. Fear the Lord — This is about memory. It’s about remembering our proximity to nothingness (remember, God creates ex nihilo and “you are dust and to dust you shall return”). It’s also about remembering that our sin takes us lower still — below the “zero” of nothingness. Every sin displays some exercise in pride, which seeks to deny dependence and overcome our proximity to nothingness. Consequently, it fails to do so, because it betrays the truth, leaving us worse off. Fear of the Lord is about remembering God and the commandments and how “hell will burn for their sins those that despise him,” as St. Benedict puts it. Fear of the Lord calls us to keep the end in mind — heaven or hell — and the fact that every tick of the clock indicates we’re moving toward the end. We were made for heaven, not hell, so hell is a real threat about which we cannot afford a kind of eschatological amnesia.

2. Love the Will of God — Life isn’t about what I want or how I want to do things. It’s not about my dreams and plans, and doing whatever it takes to achieve them. Living life well means embracing God’s dreams and plans for my life, and allowing him to bring them to completion. It’s about understanding what he wants and how he wants me to do things. This rung challenges me to lay down my will and take up the Lord’s if I wish to attain the end for which I was created (please see the previous degree).

3. Submit to a Superior in All Obedience — The obedience called for in Step 2 is not a blind one. It takes on a concrete form in one’s superior(s). In religious life, this would be the abbot or abbess, prior or prioress. In marriage, it is one’s spouse in a reciprocal way. But we can think of many other instances of authority, and also the manner in which authority has been undermined, today, in favor of the self. The point here: God’s will comes to us in and through the concreteness of one’s superior who has legitimate authority and who mediates God’s authority for my life.

4. Persevere — Obeying God’s will, mediated by a superior, can be difficult at times. Or all the time. We can be tempted to run, to look for greener pastures, to give up. The fourth step invites us to “lean in.” It challenges us to not give up and to find what God has for us within these circumstances if we can just look past our own self-will. This step invites us to take the blinders off and see things differently, to see with God’s vision. It counteracts our distractible and distracted culture, where the first inkling of boredom or twinge of awkwardness causes us to pull out our portals to another world and virtually escape.

5. Expose Sinful Thoughts, Words, and Actions — The devil loves the dark. He is not afraid of it, though he does appreciate companions. Often, when we sin, we hide out of shame; we brood over our guilt. Sin loves darkness and hates light. This step counteracts the darkening effect of sin. It gets things into the light through Sacramental confession, to be sure, but it also invites accountability with a spouse, spiritual director, or trusted friend.

6. Accept Things As They Are — St. Benedict challenges us to embrace our circumstances, to “be content with the meanest and worst of everything.” Often we feel we are capable of greater responsibility, or that certain tasks are beneath us. We go hunting for affirmation, fishing for accolades, and searching for recognition. This rung says all of that is bosh. Don’t think too highly of yourself. Embrace the present moment and receive it as God’s gift, even if it involves your hysterical three-year-old screaming in your face, though you are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

7. Have a Low Self-Regard — This one opposes the education I received in the 90s. Most of that indoctrination had to do with inspiring a great self-esteem and handing out participation trophies to everyone as reinforcement. Here, St. Benedict says we need to believe in our heart that others are better than us and that we deserve what we have received in life. Talk about counteracting the FOMO social media culture — that envy that infects the minds of most people and causes anxiety and depression. This rung challenges us to let go of one’s cult of personality and realize that humiliation can even be good for us, because it puts us in our place and prevents pride from taking over.

8. Don’t Try to Stand Out — Cue the Thomas Merton quote from above, the one about being ordinary. Many of our efforts in life have to do with gaining recognition. We want to be noticed, to be seen. This step challenges us to ward off the desire to stand out. It invites us to take off our masks and building façades. Instead, we can just be ourselves.

9. Restrain Your Tongue — Talking too much often gets us into trouble, so this step invites us to talk less. Really, we should speak only when spoken to. No incessant need to offer unsolicited advice or to give commentary. Your opinion is not so important it has to explode out of your mouth this very instant. Instead, we can give other people room to talk by saying less and learning to listen more. We should embrace silence.

10. Avoid Laughter — This one isn’t so much about being a killjoy as it is about avoiding fits of laughter or laughing at everything (even when it’s inappropriate to laugh). Laugh when it’s appropriate and within measure. But, temper your laughter and don’t skim the surface of life, taking everything as a shallow comedy. Don’t miss the deeper realities of a life lived seriously, including a sense of deep sorrow for your sins.

11. Speak Few Words — Not only does St. Benedict challenge us to restrain our tongues and speak when spoken to (Rung 9, above), he now says that when you do have to speak, don’t say much. Noonan explains, “When the monk speaks, the words that come forth should have been matured in long prayer and contemplation. If they are, they need not be many. This demands lengthy, attentive listening to God’s word, it involves silencing oneself that, in the end, all that really matters is what God has to say.”⁵

12. Look the Part — By descending the entirety of the ladder, one should not only be humble, but look humble. In other words, body language also matters. How we carry ourselves matters, so we are to carry ourselves in a humble manner. Benedict goes on to talk about how we must always bear in mind our sins and our impending judgment. These realities alone are enough to keep us from carrying ourselves arrogantly, or from trying to be too fashionable, perhaps, thus attempting to cover over a multitude of sins.

That’s the ladder of humility in a nutshell. Ascending it by descending from the summit of one’s pride is no small feat. We must come down the mountain of self and ego to become who we are as God’s sons and daughters. In fact, the whole thing has to do with becoming and living more and more sons and daughters of God. It has to do with coming to a perfect love that drives out fear (cf. 1 Jn 4:18). This perfection in love marks a movement from a servile fear of the Lord in the first rung — fear of punishment for sin — to filial fear by the end. With filial fear, we don’t fear the punishment so much as the very possibility of offending our parents, we don’t fear God’s punishment for our sin so much as sinning and hurting that relationship in the first place. Note the shift away from self and the purification of motives in this movement from servile fear to filial fear. The shift from servile to filial fear is a movement from self love to true love. To reach such heights of love, you must go down. As John the Baptist says, “He must increase; I must decrease” (Jn 3:30).

A Way of Littleness

St. Thérèse’s little way captures the essence of St. Benedict’s ladder and filial fear. She does so, not with the analogy of a ladder, but that of an elevator. Let’s turn it over to the Little Flower and let her meditation stand as the final word here:

The good God would not inspire unattainable desires; I can, then, in spite of my littleness, aspire to sanctity. For me to become greater is impossible; I must put up with myself just as I am with all my imperfections. But I wish to find the way to go to Heaven by a very straight, short, completely new little way. We are in a century of inventions; now one does not even have to take the trouble to climb the steps of a stairway; in the homes of the rich an elevator replaces them nicely. I, too, would like to find an elevator to lift me up to Jesus, for I am too little to climb the rough stairway of perfection. So I have looked in the books of the saints for a sign of the elevator I long for, and I have read these words proceeding from the mount of eternal Wisdom: “He that is a little one, let him turn to me.” So I came, knowing that I had found what I was seeking and wanting to know, O my God, what you would do with the little one who would answer Your call, and this is what I found: “As one whom the mother caresses, so will I comfort you. You shall be carried at the breasts and upon the knees they shall caress you.” Never have more tender words come to make my soul rejoice. The elevator which must raise me to the heavens is Your arms, O Jesus! For that I do not need to grow; on the contrary, I must necessarily remain small, become smaller.⁶

1. Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert, 22.

2. Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert, 23–24.

3. Note that the words “humble” and “human” share the same root — humus, “earth.” Literally “on the ground” or “low to the ground.”

4. Dom Pius Mary Noonan, OSB, The Grace to Desire It, 5.

5. Noonan, The Grace to Desire It, 64.

6. Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul trans John Clarke (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1996), 207–208.