I recently enjoyed a very "heady" experience over a period of a couple of days -- of several people independently telling me how wonderful I am, and how good I am at the work I do, and what a profound (even life-changing) effect I've had on people! Wow! What flattery!

I hear enough of that, and it puffs me right up! Yesiree bob, I'm pretty special, aren't I? In fact, I'm pretty much the most special guy to come along in a long, long time. Everyone adores me. Me! Me! Me! (The hubris that soon results is breathtaking!)

Then -- with all of that happening, I came across a passage from Teresa of Avila (16th century) that was appointed as one of the daily readings in the devotional book I use. It was appointed for the very day I was feeling so puffed up:

Unless you are careful, praise from others may harm you greatly, for when once it begins it never ceases, and generally ends in running you down afterwards. This usually takes the form of telling you that you are more holy than others and suchlike flattering speeches.

For the love of God, I implore you never to find your peace in such speeches for you might come to believe them, or to think you had done all you need and that your work was finished.

Remember how the world treated our Lord Jesus Christ, yet how it had extolled him on Palm Sunday! Men so esteemed St. John the Baptist as to mistake him for the Messiah, yet how barbarously and for what a motive they afterwards beheaded him!

Always struggle within your own heart against these dangerous flatteries, then you will go forth with deeper humility.

May God, of his great bounty, give us light.

Well, those who were flattering me weren't putting me on a pedestal as high as Our Lord Jesus Christ, or St. John the Baptist. And I certainly hope that folks won't turn around and behead me someday in the future! But the rest of these sentences were precisely what I needed to be reminded of. (Isn't the Spirit always speaking to us, and when we're alert, we hear that?)

In the beloved 13th chapter of First Corinthians, St. Paul holds up "faith, hope, and love" for special emphasis. They are, of course, essential to the Christian life. But I would hold up a fourth virtue as equally necessary: a healthy humility, to be received as a gift of the Spirit!