Dilexit Nos §202

²⁰² Often, our sufferings have to do with our own wounded ego. The humility of the heart of Christ points us towards the path of abasement. God chose to come to us in condescension and littleness. The Old Testament had already shown us, with a variety of metaphors, a God who enters into the heart of history and allows himself to be rejected by his people. Christ’s love was shown amid the daily life of his people, begging, as it were, for a response, as if asking permission to manifest his glory. Yet “perhaps only once did the Lord Jesus refer to his own heart, in his own words. And he stresses this sole feature: ‘gentleness and lowliness’, as if to say that only in this way does he wish to win us to himself”. When he said, “Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart” ( Mt 11:29), he showed us that “to make himself known, he needs our littleness, our self-abasement”.