A CHESTERTON ADVENT: THE HEROIC VIRTUE OF HUMILITY

The ideal in the background of all our humble occupations makes the drudgery not only worthwhile but noble.

Brothers, consider the time of your calling: Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were powerful; not many were of noble birth. 27But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28He chose the lowly and despised things of the world, and the things that are not, to nullify the things that are,…

( 1 Corinthians 1:27)

When he considers the ‘ideal postman’ or the ‘ideal grocer’ or the ‘ideal plumber’, rather than excusing us some politically lower sink of living, Chesterton is calling us to see the heroic virtue in the everyday work and occupations of real men and women, living humbly.

In our day, Martin Luthor King Jr. made a similar point in bucking the trend and pressure of the world to “make something of yourself” on its terms. Rather he saw that God may call or allow our work lives to take more humble directions so that we can put more focus on the preaching work and our families, if we have them. And as that becomes the case in our lives, he encouraged his listeners to see a humble calling as a noble calling.

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

― Martin Luther King Jr.

This Advent as we approach the celebration of His birth and being closer to Christ, praying for both wisdom and strength, to live Christ more fully each day, let us remember that we do so as the foolish, weak and ignorant God chose to put the wise to shame. In such a state that He calls us, God is in effect saying to Satan: Look what I can do with what you condemn! These I am forming to be Sons of God! Let us love God then more deeply and let Him not be put to shame but live heroically as everyday people in humility. The more important glory and joy is set before us!

“The conception of the Ideal Shepherd seems absurd to our modern ideas. But, after all, it was perhaps the only trade of the democracy which was equalized with the trades of the aristocracy even by the aristocracy itself. The shepherd of pastoral poetry was, without doubt, very different from the shepherd of actual fact. Where one innocently piped to his lambs, the other innocently swore at them; and their divergence in intellect and personal cleanliness was immense. But the difference between the ideal shepherd who danced with Amaryllis and the real shepherd who thrashed her is not a scrap greater than the difference between the ideal soldier who dies to capture the colours and the real soldier who lives to clean his accoutrements, between the ideal priest who is everlastingly by someone’s bed and the real priest who is as glad as anyone else to get to his own. There are ideal conceptions and real men in every calling; yet there are few who object to the ideal conceptions, and not many, after all, who object to the real men.
The fact, then, is this: So far from resenting the existence in art and literature of an ideal shepherd, I genuinely regret that the shepherd is the only democratic calling that has ever been raised to the level of the heroic callings conceived by an aristocratic age. So far from objecting to the Ideal Shepherd, I wish there were an Ideal Postman, an Ideal Grocer, and an Ideal Plumber. It is undoubtedly true that we should laugh at the idea of an Ideal Postman; it is true, and it proves that we are not genuine democrats. Undoubtedly the modern grocer, if called upon to act in an Arcadian manner, if desired to oblige with a symbolic dance expressive of the delights of grocery, or to perform on some simple instrument while his assistants skipped around him, would be embarrassed, and perhaps even reluctant. But it may be questioned whether this temporary reluctance of the grocer is a good thing, or evidence of a good condition of poetic feeling in the grocery business as a whole. There certainly should be an ideal image of health and happiness in any trade, and its remoteness from the reality is not the only important question. No one supposes that the mass of traditional conceptions of duty and glory are always operative, for example, in the mind of a soldier or a doctor; that the Battle of Waterloo actually makes a private enjoy pipeclaying his trousers, or that the ‘health of humanity’ softens the momentary phraseology of a physician called out of bed at two o’clock in the morning. But although no ideal obliterates the ugly drudgery and detail of any calling, that ideal does, in the case of the soldier or the doctor, exist definitely in the background and makes that drudgery worth while as a whole. It is a serious calamity that no such ideal exists in the case of the vast number of honourable trades and crafts on which the existence of a modern city depends.” –G.K.Chesterton, In Defense of China Shepherdesses, The Defendant, 1901

Our Advent Prayer

Lord, help me to know that:
He who is down need fear no fall,
He that is low no pride;
He that is humble, ever shall
Have God to be his guide.
Make me content with what I have
Little be it or much;
And Lord, contentment ever crave
Because Thou savest such. Amen.

Beloved, what God allows in our lives He does for a glorious purpose.

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