To Capture Humility --- or How Pope Francis reminds me of my high school biology teacher

Happy Pi Day! Habeus Papam!

As I strained to make out the themes of our good Pope Francis' first homily this morning, seated at my computer, I sensed an authentic quality that proves elusive and inspiring. It wasn't on the chorus of traits we'd been hearing as necessary for "the" papal elect. And we didn't get our bombastic American. Neither the exotic African or the pedigreed doctrinaire. God has given us a Tango-dancing soccer fan who cooks for himself and insists that while catechetical standards not be lowered, access to the Sacraments will heal us. Even ... sinners.
That trait is humility.

(That any of this is revelatory must serve as a chastisement to our current cultural state. We are too affluent, too comforted by material vanities and our own big fat opinions. By all accounts, Pope Francis has a curious mix of humility and joie de vivre. Add to that, that we seem shocked to find the purported runner-up of the last conclave elected this time and it might point to our short memory! Or.)

The humble teacher can be beyond reproach. Think of Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Such clarity! A tone is set by their example that makes chafing against it almost moot.

I had a teacher like this, and his name was Mr. Eddy.

At times I had to strain to hear Mr. Eddy teach. He spoke unhurriedly and from a vast deposit of knowledge honed in the sciences. He regularly filled two mammoth whiteboards with detailed vocabulary and life science data in his meticulous, curvish handwriting --- which we were required to copy verbatim on note-taking days at least two or three days per week.

To say that he required it seems incorrect, for I never witnessed him exert force. Somehow, his unspoken power stirred our own desire to achieve, and I've thought of him fondly and often because of it. We all know the varying styles of a teacher, and their various results --- the sad sack who is too eager to be liked, the rigid authoritarian, the burnout who phones in their duties. From these human flaws come chaos, fear and rebellion, and surely some arc of learning, however flaccid. Our note-taking duties in biology class were required only if we desired to learn, or score decently on his exams. He signed our yearbooks "Your friend, Jack" in the same penmanship with which he had moved us to fill our notebooks.

When our daily schedules were up for renewal each year, I sought a position as his aide. I contentedly made photocopies, organized files and ran little errands during one daily class period each year of school. He taught lots of high level classes I never participated in, but I reveled in the solitude and absorption of his expertise, by proxy of sorts. I got to touch all the papers in his world. And his world was orderly --- coming to us after a career in U.S. Border Patrol and a stint as our local magistrate. He was no one's fool in the classroom (he has since retired), and he's not a simple man. We too often mistake humility for weakness or simplicity of psyche --- when rather it is cultivated of great discipline, and devotion to Christ's Gospel.

I was often suspended from high school --- for things I said, wrote, drank and smoked. It happened predictably, and I wasn't proud of it, no matter what kind of braggadocio I displayed to my cohorts. I dreaded telling my parents and I dismissed the authority of the principal who dismissed me. But I always trudged a curious, heavy-footed path up the stairs to Mr. Eddy's second-story classroom to tell him I'd be gone for a few days, and the reason why. I treated no other teacher with this courtesy, and it's a testament to his gifts -- surely not mine.

Mr. Eddy was accessible, even in my brokenness. I wasn't repentant. I didn't want change (yet), but his acceptance of such facts made me willing to approach him. I wanted him to know me. I think Jesus would treat us the same. We are better than our best efforts, and often worse than our worst thoughts. It's okay. We have gifts, and when humility isn't among them, we won't gain much by trying to catch it. The examples of humility that have pierced me most are of people who simply do their job. Mr. Eddy had no trace of grandiosity, yet his dry wit existed in harmony with his love for us. To quiet a chatterbox he'd sometimes say, "(Student name), I apologize for trying to teach while you're busy interrupting." My ego slammed shut, followed by my mouth. He managed to offer this in such good humor, we were allowed to save face and receive the lesson. He allowed for the reality that we were squirmy kids --- but he knew we were plenty capable. It brings to mind what George W. Bush called "the soft bigotry of low expectations". Our world is rife with the discarded -- the troublemakers. Mr. Eddy knew how to quiet their external chatter, a silence which seemed to precede an interior calm.

Humility has nothing to do with money or prestige. It's recognized that pursuit of these stations in life can be a passion-filled distraction, rendering our lives complicated and filled with disordered tension. Early in my spiritual journey I learned one tenet of Buddhism, which I taught our then three-year-old daughter to recite: "To want is to suffer."

From "Dr. Bob", co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, I offer the best concrete description I've read of humility:

"Perpetual quietness of heart. It is to have no trouble.
It is never to be fretted or vexed, irritable or sore;
to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing
done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises
me, and when I am blamed or despised, it is to have a
blessed home in myself where I can go in and shut the
door and kneel to my Father in secret and be at peace,
as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and about
is seeming trouble."

And from the riches of the Catholic faith, the Litany of Humility:

O Jesus! meek and humble of heart, Hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed,
Deliver me, Jesus.
From the desire of being loved...
From the desire of being extolled ...
From the desire of being honored ...
From the desire of being praised ...
From the desire of being preferred to others...
From the desire of being consulted ...
From the desire of being approved ...
From the fear of being humiliated ...
From the fear of being despised...
From the fear of suffering rebukes ...
From the fear of being calumniated ...
From the fear of being forgotten ...
From the fear of being ridiculed ...
From the fear of being wronged ...
From the fear of being suspected ...
That others may be loved more than I,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it.

That others may be esteemed more than I ...
That, in the opinion of the world,
others may increase and I may decrease ...
That others may be chosen and I set aside ...
That others may be praised and I unnoticed ...
That others may be preferred to me in everything...
That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should…

May God abundantly bless Pope Francis, and may we seek to transmit love rather than contain it. The true gifts of this life are so fleeting. Share them!