Fr. Mark Plaushin, OSFS, (center) with soldiers.
Long-term recovery from addiction and vital discipleship have something in common. Both take humility to acknowledge powerlessness. There can be no growth, no restoration of the spirit or wholeness of the mind until I accept my powerlessness because it is then that I am strong in Christ. For “He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness’” (2 Corinthians 12.9). This is the way we can welcome the humility we need to convert our woundedness into self-gift - “a humility that finds its hour.” This is the hour when the best version of us is needed. It is fueled by the humility that is as Christ’s. When will that hour come?
In a hip-hop tune popular in the gym, entitled “Best of Me” by NEFEX, the rapper imagines working hard to find himself on stage before an excited audience. He raps…
“They looking up to me.
They want the best of me now.
Best of me now.
Best of me now.”
It is the hour when those around me “want the best of me now,” that my discipleship (or recovery) can change the world, or at least someone’s world. It is the hour in which my humbled self will do its best work.
Twenty years ago, a Navy Corpsman sprinted with equipment 30 yards up a 60% incline to reach and treat a wounded Marine, saving his life. Those who saw the sprint were amazed but nothing less was expected because they knew that when he wasn’t on patrol, sleeping, or eating, he was working out. Why? “If I am weak, I can’t help my Marines. They count on me, Sir.” I baptized and confirmed this humble sailor some weeks after his heroic charge.
Fr. Neil Kilty, OSFS, and Fr. Bob Ashenbrenner, OSFS often shared a table at meals.
At the Oblate Retirement Center in Childs, MD, the late Fr. Bob Ashenbrenner, OSFS, who was severely crippled and at the time using a cane to assist his walking, took on the chore of pushing the late Fr. Neil Kilty, OSFS, in his wheelchair from the chapel into the dining room. By pushing the wheelchair Fr. Bob could walk more easily thus saving Fr. Neil from labored breathing trying to wheel himself on arm strength alone. Salesian synergy—remarkable but not unexpected.
““It is God’s will that we are perfect, uniting ourselves to Him and imitating Him as closely as we can.””
The tough sailor and the tough Oblate showed their best selves in the hour their best selves were needed. Different situations but both men humbly placed their bodies at another’s service. St. Francis de Sales wrote in the Introduction to the Devout Life:
“It is God's will that we are perfect, uniting ourselves to Him and imitating Him as closely as we can. The proud person who trusts in Himself has good cause not to dare to undertake anything, but the humble person is all the more courageous in that he recognizes himself to be more powerless—and the weaker he considers himself, the more bold he is, because he has full confidence in God…”
As Lent continues, we will hear Jesus say: “I am troubled now. Yet what should I say? ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour” (John 12.27). For He had “humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross” (Philippians 2.8).
In Jesus’s hour of self-gift, our world was changed. In Christ, there can be no limit to the good that you can accomplish if you have the humility to accept your powerlessness and present your best self in the hour of need.
For Humility
Humility by patient self-emptying
Of all things that begin with me,
Quiet, you urgent fantasies of control!
O Wisdom! Shakeout my self-absorbing stuff,
My soul so hollow as the Father will fill it whole!
Fr. Mark Plaushin, OSFS
Love. Learn. Serve. Charlie Mike
