Humility as a virtue has to do with knowing ourselves as human, as earthy, as the clay into which the divine breath has been breathed . . .It is to live the paradox of our blessed and broken natures, to know that matter matters, that flesh carries spirit, that life is discovered at the precise meeting place of the human and the divine.To practice humility is to live deeply into this truth, to lift oneself to the mountain top of prayer and aspiration and to embrace the lowly valley of our own abjection.
Why has this Frenchman from France written his book in the United States to present to his friends today? Because loving the country and wanting to show his gratitude, he could find no better way of expressing it than in these two truths, intimately known to him [Jacques is blind] and reaching beyond all boundaries.
The first of these is that joy does not come from outside, for whatever happens to us it is within. The second truth is that light does not come to us from without; Light is in us, even if we have no eyes.