ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to understand the phenomenology and psychodynamics of humility, an admittedly hard-to-pin-down construct. Humility is conceived by Marcel and other Catholic thinkers as a "moral virtue" by which a person freely embraces the profound and far-reaching idea that all of his "good—nature and grace, being and action—is a gift of God's creative and salvific love". The humility of God is nothing short of "the power of God's unconditional love" and the most authentic response to personal suffering, and of course, one's death "is the unconditional surrender to that love". Ironically, humility can only develop where a person has a fairly solid sense of self and personal integrity. The humble person, especially the religious believer, relates to personal suffering in an uncommon way. He tends to view suffering as a kind of "refining fire", as one of the important ways that God teaches humility.
