Be humble, my children. Look how Christ, by kissing the feet of the first Twelve, has kissed our feet too. And he is who he is, and we are who we are: poor creatures.

With greater humility, greater effectiveness

If we are faithful, if we are humble, we will be clean, mortified, and obedient. We will be effective all over the world; the humbler we are, the more effective we will be. We have not come to command, but to obey. We have come to serve, like Jesus, who non venit ministrari, sed ministrare.²⁴ Meditate often on the words of the Baptist: Illum oportet crescere, me autem minui (John 3:30), he must increase, but I must decrease.

”Do you wish to be great? Begin from the least. Are you planning to build a building of great height? First think of the foundation of humility. And however great the mass of building you may wish and design to place above it, the greater the building is to be, the deeper you dig the foundation. The building, in the course of its construction, rises up on high, but to dig its foundation, you must first go down very low. And so you see that even a building is low before it is high, and the top is raised only after humiliation.”²⁵