THE ANTIDOTE TO NARCISSISM

 

This awesome book healed me of my aversion to the Litany of Humility. I knew a religious leader, who when challenged used angrily demand people offer the Litany of Humility because they had slighted him. He didn’t follow the precepts of the litany himself, including that we be delivered from the fear of being suspected and from the fear of suffering rebukes. 

For years, I found his hypocrisy galling, but when I read and reread Humility of the Saints, I had to confront my own hypocrisy. Instead of lamenting his lack of humility and bemoaning his projection onto others, I needed to cultivate In myself, the essential virtue without which there is no growth in the other virtues and certainly no escape from narcissism.

I set before myself a challenge, I begged of myself if I could imitate the Saints and the very real, sometimes gritty ways, they developed humility. In my ignorance, I had not known of classmate of St. John Vianney, St Marcellin Champagnat, who made me feel my intellectual arrogance acutely. Marcellin was a heroic teacher-priest in post-revolution France, a time when in many places, especially the rural areas, Catholic institutions and schools had been obliterated.

St Marcellin knew the pain of missing out on his childhood education and only began formal reading and writing when he was 11. He founded the Marist Brothers and strove to restore French education, especially for the poorest of the poor. 

While he was consumed with the desire to teach the children and young men who would otherwise have been illiterate, he was never a braggart show-off and required his teachers to use simple language as opposed to pretentious prose. I was rightly brought up short because I have a prideful weakness for elevated language. 

Oh, and Marcellin could not be more different from the religious leader I mentioned above, he begged of the Lord for humility in his prayer and openly confessed many “sins and imperfections”.

I fall so far behind these Saints that it can be a painful occasion of self knowledge, but I put forth the cultivation of humility as the one true antidote to the narcissism epidemic. It’s best to lead by example and follow the Saints in ways so wonderfully made real in these pages, that leading by example will help stop the rot of self-adoration. 

The Saints were never narcissists, and when you read of Saint Kateri Tekawitha’s total forgiveness of her relatives who jealousy bullied her after the death of her parents, she stands in contrast to the grandiose or covert vindictiveness of the narcissist who can’t forgive imagined affronts let alone real ones.

St Martin de Porres showed himself free of the addiction to narcissistic supply, namely, admiration and praise when as the barber and his monastery, he cut short the hair of a vain novice and got called all sorts of horrible names, including “a mulatto dog”. Saint Martin fulfilled his office in the face of stinging insults. 

The Saints were true empaths and it was their humility that grew their empathy. Blessed Solanus Casey counseled up to 200 people a day who relied on his compassion and counsel. 

The Saints were not given to illusions of grandeur or false fantasies of greatness. Their holy, humanitarian accomplishments owed to their pleas that they be forgotten, because they spent their time doing good, not preserving their good name. Even the greatest miracle workers spent their years in sanctifying themselves and others, not PR exercises to become celebrities.

Just as everyone needs humility, everyone needs this book and atheists, and those who dislike the Catholic Church will find it a healing and refreshing read, as well as offering the sole cure for narcissism, especially if they have been hurt by narcissists or are grappling with the tendencies themselves. 

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Humility of the Saints is available here, and you may also like, The Most Powerful Saints in Exorcism by Charles Fraune and Patrick O'Hearn. 

All images used are in the public domain.