UNISINOS – RESIDÊNCIA CONCEIÇÃO
R. Aloysio Sehnem, 186 20 February, 2013 XLIII:1
UNISINOS
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Dear Benefactors Family, Colleagues and Friends:
Humility is a virtue of maturity. Simply put, it is the objective capacity to recognize one’s abilities (or talents) and one’s limits (or inabilities) and be grateful for all. It helps keep one sober as to the talents and strengths, limits and curiosities of which he or she is endowed. Generated from the three in-created virtues of Faith, Charity and Hope, humility can easily be confused with ineptitude, ignominy or cowardice. As a virtue of maturity it requires a certain self-identity.
A paucity or outright LACK of maturity can complicate life. Especially in childhood, adolescence and youth as we mightily trod or plod primary and secondary education (public or private), we strive to discover our talents but initially encounter our inabilities. Strong academic capacities impart a certain advantage at this stage. They allow one to navigate categories and classes of subjects, fixed knowledge and information. However the genius and/or savant (idiot or prodigious) can experience real frustration as their unique capacities are all but ignored. The broad scope of academics, facile and invigorating in some subjects, is tempered by the stress of confusion presented by other subjects. An individual of academic talents navigates this mental quagmire with more cerebral ease than does the genius and savant. Self-discipline (minimal at this age), required for this navigation, is especially demanded by the intellectually gifted who constantly face the challenge to use talents (still being discerned) to address questions previously resolved by societies and cultures but whose resolution the genius frequently questions.
Thus can arise a suspicion of ineptitude or ignominy. Perceiving and coming to know the talents that mark one’s intellect, the genius and savant can hide these in examinations and public presentations abhorring recognition (public and private), preferring instead to withdraw socially and even physically from a culture to focus their talents on questions of challenge. This has its detrimental effects often manifest in minimal or even absent interchange with others of similar intellect. However such seclusion, coupled with emerging self-discipline, paradoxically can be a blessing as it hinders recognition of these intellectuals from the variety of prizes and public awards which in themselves can be motivation to one’s service, but can waste valuable time while also being used to canonize and bolster doubtful and even erroneous agendas. Jean Paul Sartre rejected the Nobel Prize for literature and continued prolific as a philosopher. Grigori Perelman, solving the Poincaré conjecture, rejected the Fields Medallion and thus insured his legendary status as a mathematician. Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), in abdication, confirms the humble courage that has been a characteristic of his life.
Humility? Ignominy? Ineptitude? Cowardice? One cannot judge! The facts remain. They remind us that a Power beyond us constantly calls. That Power stooped to ignominious death during the Pascal Passion almost 2000 years past. To this day that Passion strikes many as ineptitude. Yet the Oblation of The Savior God was and remains an act of Divine Humility that changed us all. Be Grateful! Be Joyful! Be Humble in celebrating a:
HAPPY and BLESSED LENTEN and PASCAL SEASON!
Sincerely in Jesus Christ
Ed Benya, S.J.