The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - Humility Is a Powerful Virtue

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

Humility is often misunderstood as weakness, but it is actually a strength that opens the door to grace. Jeff discusses the powerful virtue of humility and its crucial role in living as an activated disciple. He shares insights from his recent pilgrimage to Poland and Czechia, highlighting the humble lives of saints like St.John Paul II, St.Maximilian Kolbe, and St.Edith Stein. Email us with comments or questions at [e-mail]. Text “jeffcavins” to 33-777 to subscribe and get Jeff’s shownotes delivered straight to your email! Or visit https://media.ascensionpress.com/?s=&page=2&category%5B0%5D=Ascension%20Podcasts&category%5B1%5D=The%20Jeff%20Cavins%20Show for full shownotes!

This podcast is brought to you by Ascension. To discover even more free Catholic podcasts, videos, and resources, to help you live your faith every day, visit ascensionpress.com. Welcome to the Jeff Kaven Show, where we talk about the Bible, discipleship, and evangelization, putting it all together in living as activated disciples. This is show 450. Humility is a powerful virtue. Welcome to the show this week. I'm Jeff Kavins. Thank you for joining me. Appreciate it. And this is your first time. Welcome. We talk every week about discipleship and we talk about scripture, certainly how to study scripture and read it, interpret scripture. But our goal is really taking everything that we can as far as what Jesus taught, what he passed on to the church, and try to put that into practice in our life, not just to be. become great people, not just to become happy people, although both of those are very good goals,

right? You want to be happy and you want to be a good person, but it's really to honor Jesus, to do his will. And by doing his will, I think that's the best place to be in life. You know, typically problems arise in our life, problems that we don't want to deal with when we are walking contrary to his will. So I'm going to talk today about one aspect of, you know, of being a disciple of the Lord that I was thinking about over the last 10 days or so. I just came back a couple days ago from a pilgrimage that Emily and I led over to Poland, and then we ended the pilgrimage over in the Czech Republic. It used to be called the Czech Republic, and since 2018, now they prefer the name Czechia.

Chequia is the first half of what used to be Czechoslovakia. Slovakia is another country. Those two countries came out of Czechoslovakia. But we were in Prague, and that's where we came home from, was this immense city of Prague. It is really, really big. Well, needless to say, we were immersed in Catholic culture, particularly in Poland. And Emily and I enjoy leading the pilgrimage to Poland. And we hope to do more in the future.

One of the things that we were struck by was the deep Catholic tradition. even in the face of communism and World War II with Hitler and the saints that came out of World War II. We named our pilgrimage the Saints of Poland and we visited places where Maximilian Colby ministered. And of course he ended up in Auschwitz, along with Edith Stein, who gave her life for the Lord also in the death camp. And we also had the opportunity to go to the beautiful.

Church of Divine Mercy in Krakow, Sister Faustina. The real highlight for me, I have to tell you, was John Paul II. And I've been to Poland before. We've led pilgrimages to Poland before, but this time it just really hit me, you know. And the thing that hit me was the humility of John Paul II and humility as a powerful virtue. And the things that he went through growing up and the things he encountered in his young priesthood, became the bishop in Krakow, the cardinal, and then, of course, the Holy Father, the first pope outside of Rome,

outside of Italy in over 400 years. But it was his humility that struck me. Everywhere we went, the things we learned about, it just drew me to him. And we heard that from so many on the pilgrimage and how their relationship with some of these saints changed. And so if you get a chance to go sometime, it is very, very powerful.

But I do want to talk to you about humility as a powerful virtue. When I say that, it's almost ironic because people think of humility in terms of weakness oftentimes. It's like giving up, you know, that your will, not my will, and go ahead and walk over me, that type of thing. And that really has nothing to do with humility. But humility is a virtue. In fact, it's such a powerful virtue that without that, without that, virtue of humility, good luck on the other virtues. In fact, I'm going to talk about that here a little bit. If you would like to show notes for today, all you got to do is text my name,

Jeff Kaven's one word, J-E-F-F-C-A-V-I-N-S, and send it to the number 3-3-7-77-text it to 3-7-7, and you'll get the notes. So let me start off by saying something I've said many times on the show before over the last seven, eight years. And that is the do. You're at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, if you ever go to Greece. And it says with an inscription there, know thyself, know thyself. And when people hear about that, especially when you talk about Greece and wisdom and, you know, all the great minds that came out of Greece. You would think that know thyself is really speaking to the positive as far as know your strengths and your giftings and so forth. Not true.

when they put that inscription on the door at Delphi, Know Thyself, that ancient transcription was talking about becoming aware of our limitations. And the person who knows their limitations typically is a wiser person, and they know what road to go down, and they're aware of their limitations. Now, their limitations aren't going to keep them from doing things, but they're going to be wiser in how they proceed if they know their limitations. and that great quote of Father Juan Luis Lourda, who I probably have used 25 times over the last,

I don't know how many years because I like it so much. He has a book called The Virtues of Holiness. And he said that the best business in the world would be buying men at what they're worth and selling them at what they think they're worth. Quite the market, huh? You may be the first trillionaire if you could do that. So let's take a look at this virtue of humility.

And as you know, if you've been with me before, that a virtue is something that we practice over and over. You make a choice to do these things and they become a habit in your life. So the virtue of humility, St. Thomas said, consists in keeping oneself within one's own balance, not reaching out to things above one, but submitting to one's superior. So humility is really making a proper assessment or a correct estimate of oneself in relationship to God, but not just God alone, but in relationship to one another as well in the body of Christ. We don't have an overestimated or a deflated evaluation of ourselves. We know who we are, and humility is not thinking really less of yourself, but it's thinking

of yourself less. And of course, the Apostle Paul was just a master of this in talking about humility. When he said to the Romans in Romans 12, 3, he says, for by the grace given to me, Now think about this. This is Paul, and Paul is a giant in the faith. He's one of the two super apostles, the other being Peter. He says, for by the grace given to me, I bid everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, which is kind of where we end up a lot, don't we? We think we're a little bit smarter and everybody else. He says, don't think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith, which God has assigned to him. This issue of thinking more of ourselves, I think it really does hold us back in our relationship with the Lord and our growth. And the Monday morning quarterback is a really good example.

You know, we're just a few weeks into the NFL season here in America, which for some people is like the liturgical calendar. And you'll hear people on Monday morning just really knowing everything. I mean, what should have happened on Sunday, and it's like everybody's a super coach, or at least a lot of people, are super coaches. So we have to have a sober judgment of who we are and what our giftings are. So the corresponding vice to humility, what is it?

It's pride, of course. And you know what's interesting about that is that pride seems to scream because when a person is filled with pride, everybody seems to know it. It's like they listen and then they look at each other like, oh, man, did you hear that? So pride is a desire to be, in its root, it's a desire to be independent of God and to seek after one's own goods and ends. It's your own agenda. It's your own life. It's your own kingdom and your decisions. And that's pride. The one who really fell to this, of course, was the enemy, Lucifer. Remember that? said in Ezekiel 28, your heart was proud because of your beauty. You corrupted your

wisdom for the sake of your splendor. And in Isaiah 14, you said, your heart. I will ascend to heaven above the stars of God. I will set my throne on high. Now, on the other hand here, we have what? Jesus. We have Jesus is the example of humility. Now, Moses was the most humble man in the Old Testament. And when you think about Moses, a lot of people don't think about weakness or humility. They think that he's a strong leader. He led them out of Egyptian bondage. But that gets back to our understanding of what humility is. It is often defined in negative terms or weak terms. But humility is actually a real strength. That virtue allows you to gain so much more if you can walk in humility. And I'll demonstrate that in the second half of

this show. Okay. So Jesus is the example of humility. And he even talks about his humility in the same context as you going through a hard time. So, for example, in Matthew 1128, Jesus says, come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Then in verse 29, he says, take my yoke upon you, a yoke is a worldview, and learn from me. Now, if Jesus was a world leader today, he wouldn't say the next line in Matthew 1129. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me if he was today and he was like us. He would say, for I am educated and I'm very wise and I have insights that no one else has like the channel and share. But he doesn't. He says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls.

See, humility is seeing through the eyes of Christ. And Jesus is the one who came and humbled himself left heaven came to earth humbled himself as paul said in philippians two eight having come to earth as a man jesus humbled himself and became obedient even to the point of dying on the cross and this is something that i think about with john paul the second and i was thinking about it in poland humility was the hidden strength that overcame communism humility was the hidden strength that overcame communism humility was the hidden strength that overcame political tyranny. Humility was the key with his father Jersey over in Warsaw or John Paul II or Edith Stein or Maximilian Colby.

They're saints because of their humility, right? So every aspect of Jesus' life simply oozed humility. I mean, just the fact that God became human, came down, humbled himself, came down, became one of us. He grows up in what? 30 years of the silent years. I mean, if he's Jesus, why not start doing your thing when you're two or three publicly? That's not humility. He identifies with us in every way. The catechism even says in paragraph 564 that his example of holiness in the daily life of family and work was an example of humility. It was. His baptism, where did he go if you've been into the great adventure by the way did you know the new great

adventures it's coming out now we'll have more to say about that probably next week but the baptism of jesus at the jordan that's the lowest place on earth just a couple miles north of the dead sea lowest geographical place on earth that's where he identifies with us as baptized that's where he began his public ministry at age of 30 so his temptation in the wilderness was a demonstration of humility. And in fact, I'll put this in the show notes for you, and I'll give you some cross references from the catechism there. That one's 566, paragraph 566. And he said an example in so many ways, oh my, you know, he washed feet, and he talked about how the greatest in the kingdom is the one who has humility and becomes like a child. But we can learn so much from humility when we choose

not our will, but God's will. And we choose not to lift ourselves up and be puffed up, but to be humble in our estimation of ourselves, to know our weakness, and to proceed with a humble attitude in what God has for us in our family, whether it be at home or your marriage, being a parent, or your work, spending money. Every area of life is subject to humility. So I'm going to take a break here when I come back. I'm going to give you some things that we can learn from humility that are just so important. And all of these things that I'm going to share with you, I'm going to share at least five, five major things with you, you will also see in the life of John Paul II. Saint Pope John Paul II, the great. You're listening to the Jeff Kaven show.

Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz, and I'm excited to announce that I'll be hosting Season 4 of the Catholic Classics podcast from Ascension Press. This year, we'll read through The Imitation of Christ by Thomas Acampus and unpack the timeless wisdom and profound spiritual lessons laid out in this book. You guys, the imitation of Christ is the second most widely read Catholic devotional ever written only behind the Bible. And so many saints have read this book. So many people have been inspired to imitate the life and teachings of Jesus.

through this podcast, you will learn what it means to imitate Christ and how we can do that in a world that seems to only want to pull us away from him. Starting October 22nd in the Ascension app, we'll read a section of the book every single day and then unpack what it means and how it applies to our lives today. If you'd like to join me, you can download the reading plan for this series by visiting ascensionpress.com slash Catholic Classics. I'll see you in October 22nd in the Ascension app and God bless. Thank you for returning. Talking today about humility is a powerful virtue. And I wanted to share with you some things that we can learn from the scriptures about humility.

And I'll be honest with you. I don't think these are the types of things that you just, it's a one-off. In other words, you acknowledge these truths and think, okay, good, I'm beyond that now. I think we've got to live in this. I think we've got to live in what scripture says about, about humility. And to be honest with you, and I'm speaking about myself as well, I think there are times when we hear very insightful things, whether it be from a teacher, from Publio, whoever it might be, and we go, wow, is that something else? And then we just move on. We don't capture it. We don't meditate on it. We certainly don't do it. But think for a moment. Of all the times that you've been wowed in the spirit, wowed by a talk, wowed by a book, a quote, a song, whatever, what if you had really

spent some time going deep into that and said, what's the life lesson here? What will happen if I put this into practice? What will happen if I dwell on this for the whole day, the week, the month? What would happen? I really do believe that we, we fall short, we sell ourselves short when we do not dwell on the things that grabbed our heart. You know what I mean? Let's take a look at it, shall we? Number one, humility is the key to gaining wisdom in your life. So I'm going to ask you, do you need wisdom in your life today?

I do. I can think of all the areas that I need wisdom right now. You know, I need wisdom in family life, marriage, raising children. I need wisdom in how to be a grandpa. You're saying, oh, you're too young to be a grandpa, Jeff. Oh, thank you. But no, I've got three grandchildren, one on the way, and I need wisdom. And now here's what the scripture says about it.

In Proverbs 11, 2, it says, when pride comes, then comes disgrace. But with the humble is wisdom. So I just got to ask you a question. Do you need wisdom in your life? If you need wisdom in your life, you're not going to get it unless you go down Humility Avenue. You just not. Humility is what sets the table for the wisdom of God to come right down your street.

So if you need wisdom, one of the first things you do is you humble yourself before God, which means, Lord, I don't have the answers, you do, I don't have the wisdom, you do, I don't have the insight. You do. I don't have all of the needed information for this project, but you do. I don't know how to be a father on my own. I need your help. So I'm going to humble myself. You're the teacher. You're the master. I'm the student. I'm the disciple. My goal is to become like you. Number two, God looks to the humble to work through. Have you ever wondered about the saints and ask yourself the question like Edith Stein, Maximilian Colby, John Paul the second, Faustina, the list goes on. Why does God work through these people?

Well, I would argue that if you were to put their soul under a microscope and take a look, you'd find a bucket load of humble. And I think that's one of the reasons that these saints are saints is that they learned, learned to walk in here. humility. You train themselves to walk in humility. So God looks to the humble to work through. Now here's what Isaiah says in Isaiah 66 too. I still remember when I memorize that verse way back in the late 1970s. All these things my hand has made. And so all these things are mine, says the Lord. But this is the man to whom I will look. He that is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word. So who has God looked to to work through? The one who's humble and contrite in spirit. That word contrite literally means smashed. It's like,

okay, I know who I am. Lord, you got to put my life together. You've got to give me wisdom. You teach me how to love. Number three, we're talking here about what we can learn from scripture about humility. Number three, humility prepares the avenue to your heart for God's grace. Oh, is this important? Why is that important? Well, grace is one of those words that kind of is like mushy peas over in the UK. We're not quite sure what it is after you mush it up. Is that peas? What is it? You know, and the word grace is like mushy peas to people. It's just like, I'm not sure what that is, you know? And what is grace? Well, grace is the life of the Trinity. That is the life of the Trinity. The father loves the son. The son loves the father.

The love between the father and the son is the Holy Spirit. It is a family of love. A family of love. It's a relationship. And if you need that love, you need that grace in your life. Well, humility prepares the avenue to your heart for God's grace. Here's what it says. James Chapter 4. See, I'm going to throw in a couple here for you on the notes. I'm going to give you James 4-6 and 1st Peter 5-5. Okay. Throw that one is a freebie there. Okay, so it says, but he gives more grace. Therefore, it says God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Those that are filled with pride, my friend, they do not experience the life of the Trinity that much. But the humble, yes. they do they really do so right now in your life if you're in need of wisdom you're in need of grace man this is the podcast for you today isn't it is this god or what in your life is god speaking to you today i hope so i really do number four this one will come in really handy especially in the family how many times in your family do you get into some kind of argument where things just go

South, maybe even in your own family, but in your extended family, you know, for Christmas or Thanksgiving or reunions, whatever it might be. Boy, there's a lot of arguing that goes on. And people fight, James says, because they don't get what they want. But humility, you can diffuse an argument when you're humble. You can diffuse arguments when you walk in humility. Proverbs 15, 1, a soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word. And it stirs up anger.

you know, and after you say something that's harsh or in your face and then everybody gets angry, you think, oh, why did I say that? Why did I stir it up like that? Why didn't I walk in wisdom here? Why, how come I left humility and now look when I'm at? So, number five, you do not, oh, if this is good, you do not have to put on a false front when you are humble. In other words, you don't have to live fake lives.

You don't have to be some kind of weird personality with this group, another personality with that group. No hypocrisy. The word hypocrite means an actor. You don't have to act. Be you. God created you. Stop being someone else. Stop trying to be someone else. Be you. But the humble version of you. Luke 12-1, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Humility puts you in a place where you can be you. You don't have to put on a show. You don't have to act like someone, hope they think you are, just be the child of God, the disciple, the follower of Jesus, just be. St. Augustine said, humility, and this is what I was talking about earlier, how humility is such

a foundational virtue, Augustine said, humility is the foundation of all other virtues. Hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not exist, there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance. St. Augustine. That, my friend, is why I believe that humility played a big role in all the saints of Poland. I do. John Paul II. How did he become such a wise person? Humility. How did he become such a voice in the midst of darkness? Humility. How did he overcome being shot in Parkinson's and everything he went through? in World War II? The losing of his mother, his sister, his brother, his father, he said after his father died, I have never felt such loneliness. How did he get through all these things?

Humility. He knew who he was and he relied upon God. He knows who God is. Very, very powerful. So to wind this up this week, I'm going to encourage you to, it's twofold. Number one, For the next couple days, if you're listening to this in the evening, the next two days, if you're listening to this early in the morning, today and tomorrow, you can judge. But for the next couple of days, take note of the movement of your heart. What do I mean by that? I mean, if you use a little moleskin notebook, maybe notes in your smartphone, whatever it is, take note of the movements of your heart.

how do you feel when someone else is exalted? How do you feel and deal with the situation where somebody might criticize you? When a project is going to be discussed, follow your heart. What do you sound like? What are the words that you use a lot when you talk about yourself? Take note of it for a couple of days. Just mark it down. Be brutally honest with yourself.

I mean, this isn't, you don't want to fool yourself. Just write it down. get a snapshot of your heart. And then what I'd like you to do is to pick out one of your favorite saints and do some reading. If you don't have a book, look it up on the Internet. I've heard that there's a lot of information on the Internet. Now, I've heard that. So you can take almost any saint and you can go pretty deep just Googling it and do some reading for a couple days on that saint.

doing this, marking down the humility that you see, the humility that you notice. Now, for me, that would be Pope John Paul II that I would look at and read, which I'll do with you. So that after about four days or so, you're going to have a couple of days of monitoring your heart, your attitude, your words, the way you think about yourself. And then for me, it's going to be John Paul II for a couple days. I'm looking at a few of his books right now on my bookshelf, and then takes him a little bit of time and compare them and then pray and ask that older brother, sister in Christ, that saint. For me, Pope John Paul's in my posse, he's in my crew, and ask him to help me, pray for me, pray for me, pray for me, intercede for me. And I think that that could really yield some wonderful fruit, don't you think?

So, if you'd like to enter in, do it, and I'd love to hear from you. My email is The Jeff Kaven Show at ascensionpress.com. And I'd love to hear the results in your life, what God did in your life. Humility is a powerful virtue. Let's pray, shall we? In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, Lord Jesus, we love you so much. And we thank you, Lord, that you've called us to become like you. you've called us to walk with you as a disciple and to be transformed by you your words your teachings

your example lord we want to walk in humility as you do help us we pray and and lord we want to develop a relationship with some of the saints that have been so humble we want to learn from them as well we give you our heart this week and ask you to help us to to really realize how humility is a powerful virtue. And Lord, I pray that our hearts will really change this week by the power of the Holy Spirit. Thank you, Lord, for the Eucharist also that fuels us and gives us grace to see these changes. Holy Spirit, we can't do this without you. Our blessed Mother, we thank you for your intercession. Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women. Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners. Now and at the

hour of our death. Amen. Before I say goodbye, I want to remind you, this podcast is on the Ascension app now free. You can send the app all over the world, tell people about it, and these shows will be right in the app. If you're listening on the app right now, right here in the app. That's where I'm coming from. Otherwise, it will still be on Apple and other sources to be sure. But I would ask you to share the app with others. And it's just beautiful. We've got the Great Adventure Bible in there. We got the catechism and the Catholic Church and all kinds of teachings. We have so many teachings in the app that we would call it an embarrassment of riches. Truly. God bless you. Have a wonderful week.