HUMILITY AND LOVE

by Archpriest Dr Georgios Lekkas

What caused the outpouring of love from Mary and the outpouring of love from the people toward Jesus, as narrated in the Gospel reading for Palm Sunday? Surely, it was the Divine Humility of the Lord Jesus.

The Lord Jesus Christ came into the world and perfectly fulfilled the will of His Father for the salvation of the world, so that His Father would glorify Him more than any other human being. Thus the Divine Humility of the Lord Jesus is demonstrated by the fact that throughout His earthly life, He had no will of His own but that of His Father.

The Divine Humility of the Lord Jesus allowed Him to become the voice of His Father in the world, to perform so many miracles, to sacrifice Himself on the Cross for all of us, and to rise again in order to draw us all—if possible—into the life of the Holy Trinity.

In fact, just as the Evangelist John declares elsewhere (Jn VI, 32-59), the Humility of the Lord Jesus is such that it enables His Heavenly Father to bring us near to Him through His Son. And because the Son is one with His Father through Divine Humility, only through the virtue of humility—granted to the faithful by the Holy Spirit—can we also become one with the incarnate Son and Word of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, every time we partake of the Holy Eucharist.

The Divine Humility of the Lord Jesus is the reason why an endless love for Him is born within us, why we desire to thank Him and glorify Him for everything, why we come to hate whatever separates us from Him, why we wish to keep His commandments even when this seems humanly impossible, why we long above all else to receive His Body and Blood and can no longer live without Him.

And just as the Divine Humility of the Lord Jesus makes it possible for us to unite, through the Holy Spirit, with our Unbegotten Father, the divine humility of the Saints helps us unite with the Lord Jesus. The Saints, both during their earthly lives and even more so after their repose, act as mediators for us before the Lord Jesus, because their will is the will of our Christ. The boldness of the Saints before the Lord is thus directly proportional to the divine humility they were granted in this life, with the foremost among them being the All-Holy Mother of our Lord and God.

When someone begins to carry within them the Divine Humility of the Lord Jesus, they cease to confront evil head-on, they no longer wish to judge anyone, they love all people, they bring peace, they rejoice in living through others, they desire to diminish themselves so that Christ may grow in everyone, they take responsibility for everything, they hate even a single thought that separates them from our Lord Jesus Christ, and they pray for the salvation of all. The humble person vindicates the sacrifice of our Christ and ignites within us Divine Love.

Palm Sunday, 13 April, 2025.

Fr Georgios Lekkas is a priest of the Holy Orthodox Metropolis of Belgium.