Having A Humble Heart

If you have a heart, you will be saved.

Abba Pambo Cited in Mystical Hours

Here is Br. Teasdale’s  insightful and explanatory commentary on the importance of the heart to Christian monasticism and mysticism…

Abba Pambo is a desert father of the fourth century, a Christian hermit, living in Egypt. The word, abba, means father and signifies his place in the movement of early Christianity….

They believed that humility of the heart was the most important virtue in the spiritual life.

For Abba Pambo, to have a heart is to be governed inwardly by the commitment to humility, as well as simply being humble. If we have humility of the heart, then we can be saved because we are open to God; we can hear the Divine guidance.

Humility of heart allows us to know our own woundedness,our passions, and our need for spiritual growth. How is your heart? Is it awake and humble?

We, in our modern culture, have confused the understanding of the heart with sentiment rather than with courage. One’s feelings can just be expressions of one’s ego preferences, self protection, and a resistance to necessary changes one needs to make to free the ego and to deepen the soul’s journey.

As I have read and experienced it, to take on a more “Desert” approach to my Christian understanding and practice, I have had to summon an attitude or outlook that fosters and expands more unselfish resolve and that encourages and a more intrapersonal courage when confronting the issues of relationships, healing, and spiritual progress. 

Courage, in the sense of psychomachia, or the battle for the soul, requires not only the willingness to stand fast in one’s faith, hope, and love, but it also takes a large and often ongoing amount of humility and a sense of forgiveness for all that you do not know, all that you cannot yet comprehend, and for all that you have done without sufficient moral guidance or understanding.

What compels me towards a greater sense of an abiding courageous sense of humility is keeping my eyes on the goal and my heart open to inspiration. As Abba Pambo teaches, without humility you do not slow down enough to read or receive the signs of divine guidance. 

Without humility, we can easily fail to pay attention. We can lack the courage to follow through in humble obedience to those guidelines and inner teachings.

Without courageous humility,  we cannot arrive at the doorstep of inspiration or begin to live a life dedicated to our souls.