Humility, like charity is always capable of increasing ... - St. Elizabeth of the Trinity

If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.

Humility ...

A friend asked me how and why a person can keep falling into mortal sin.  I answered, fallen human nature. 

Years ago I found what Pope John Paul I had to say about the phenomenon deeply edifying and encouraging - especially after numerous failures, repeated confessions, and so on.  I like to repeat the quote today ...  It goes something like this: God loves humility so much he sometimes allows us to fall - even into mortal sin - why? - so that in repenting we become more humble.

As Betsy Ten Boom stated in the horrors of the Nazi camps: 'there is no pit so deep that his love is not deeper still.'  I think of that often.

Providentially, today, I found these intuitions affirmed again in the writings of St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, who wrote: "To be plunged into humility is to be plunged into God, for God is at the bottom of the abyss."

God is at the bottom of the pit.

even there your hand shall lead me...

Over the years, I have come to understand God never forsakes us when we turn to him - he is there.  He is always there.  That is why, in every fall, sometimes still on the ground, as it were, I looked to see who was with me in my fall.  At first sight - no one.  I am all alone.  Until I eventually understood that Christ was there ...  Be it Christ who had fallen carrying the cross for me, or Christ, just as he was there for the woman caught in adultery, when he stooped down to her level - not condemning - but pardoning.  Even when my guilt and shame plunged me into hell itself, I remembered that Christ descended even there.  He descended to the dead.

God is at the bottom of the abyss ... the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! 

If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me. 

If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.

for darkness is as light with you.