Transforming Desire

Travelling about the lake (this time running) has been a good source of thoughts lately.  On my run today it struck me how living a good life and living a Christian life are as much about transforming our desires as they are about transforming our behavior.  In paraphrasing William Law, Peter Kreeft once said "If you will look into your own heart in utter honesty, you must admit that there is one and only one reason why you are not even now a saint. You do not wholly want to be."  This, then, is the task.  We must want to be saints.  The most successful people really want to be successful.  This holds true in the spiritual life, as much as in the world of business or the world of athletics.

But how do we begin to transform our desires?  I suppose it starts by living as if we had them.

Humilitas

While I was walking back home today, it stuck me in a new way why humility is such an important virtue and why pride is such a deadly vice.  It's a simple as this: all the greatest things in life are gifts.  Without much qualification one could say that all things, including life itself, are gifts.  Not only does grace perfect nature, but nature itself is gratuitous.  Humility recognizes this and experiences everything as a gift.  Pride does not.  The prideful person sees himself primarily as a giver rather than as a receiver.  The guy who thinks he is God's greatest gift to women would do well to think rather on how women are God's gift to him.  The truest friendships have made me feel humbled and completely unworthy.

Here's the summary:

The world is pure gift.
Humility experiences world as pure gift.
Pride thinks it has more to give than to receive.

Thus, humility is the attitude which is properly oriented toward reality.