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Keeping a Low Center of Gravity

Teresa of Calcutta Teresa of Calcutta
07 12 Wakeboarding

Introductory Note

In a blog post from The Prodigal Father, Fr. Michael Denk writes of teaching his sisters (the related-by-blood kind) to waterski. The key to maintaining balance as you ride the waves, it turns out, is to lower your center of gravity. Fr. Denk goes on to write:

The same concept is true with spiritual life. We can keep our spiritual center of gravity low as well and if we do, it’s really easier to maintain our balance. It’s a lot more difficult for satan the enemy or people to knock us over if we keep our spiritual center of gravity low and that’s humility.

In keeping with our theme of humility this week, today we offer some thoughts from Mother Teresa of Calcutta on how to keep our spiritual center of gravity low, and so our lives in balance.

The Renovaré Team

“Humility is the mother of all virtues; purity, charity and obedience. It is in being humble that our love becomes real, devoted and ardent. If you are humble nothing will touch you, neither praise nor disgrace, because you know what you are. If you are blamed you will not be discouraged. If they call you a saint you will not put yourself on a pedestal.” 

Mother Teresa’s 15 Guidelines for Cultivating Humility

1. Speak as little as possible about yourself.

2. Keep busy with your own affairs and not those of others.

3. Avoid curiosity.

4. Do not interfere in the affairs of others.

5. Accept small irritations with good humor.

6. Do not dwell on the faults of others.

7. Accept censures even if unmerited.

8. Give in to the will of others.

9. Accept insults and injuries.

10. Accept contempt, being forgotten and disregarded.

11. Be courteous and delicate even when provoked by someone.

12. Do not seek to be admired and loved.

13. Do not protect yourself behind your own dignity.

14. Give in, in discussions, even when you are right.

15. Choose always the more difficult task.

Photo through WikiCommons.

Mother Teresa's 15 Guidelines for Cultivating Humility are in the public domain.
Teresa of Calcutta
About the Author
Teresa of Calcutta

Mother Teresa (1910−1997), known in the Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, was an Albanian-Indian Roman Catholic nun and missionary. 

In 1950 Teresa founded the Missionaries of Charity, a Roman Catholic religious congregation which had over 4,500 sisters and was active in 133 countries in 2012. The congregation manages homes for people dying of HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis; soup kitchens; dispensaries and mobile clinics; children’s- and family-counseling programs; orphanages, and schools. Members, who take vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience, also profess a fourth vow: to give ​“wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor”

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