Jirachi the Wishmaker ✔️Think of Jesus, at the Last Supper, washing his disciples’ feet: this is tending to the lowly, an ancient way of expressing devotion, of practicing humility. Humility: the word contains the same root as the word humus, which refers to soil, earth, the ground. It is also linked to the word human, for we are earthlings, we are creatures whose feet touch the ground.
Though they share the same root, how different humiliation is from humility. For if humility is a state that blossoms from within, a state of true affection for and kinship with the lowly, humiliation is a state that is imposed from without. To be humiliated is to be brought low, to feel ashamed of being one-downed, of being made to “eat dirt.”