Daily Reading for October 24 • The Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost

These are the stages to freedom from self-centeredness,
to humility,
the centerpiece of the true life.

The first stage of humility
is to keep the sacred nature of consciousness
and the world in which it exists
always alive within us.

Everything we think,
everything we do,
everything we feel,
is cast in time forever.
Every moment that we live is irreplaceable,
therefore each moment is hallowed.

We must be on guard
against despair, against fear,
against bitterness, against self-seeking,
and have the tenacity and courage
to think optimistically and act affirmatively,
and to put the needs of others always before our own. . . .

The fifth stage of humility
is not to conceal our faults,
but to be ruthlessly honest
with ourselves
and about ourselves,
for to lie to ourselves or to others
is to falsify our relationship with true life. . . .

The seventh stage of humility
is not only to declare ourselves to be humble,
but to believe in our hearts that we are of no consequence.
For alone we are of no moment—
in the vast reaches and endless memory of the universe
our most profound idea is the merest fantasy;
our greatest triumphs
and our meanest actions
are as lasting as a mark in sand.

From Always We Begin Again: The Benedictine Way of Living by John McQuiston II. Copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Morehouse Publishing, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. www.morehousepublishing.com