Christ, Model of Humility and Voluntary Abjection
Blessed Angela of Foligno:
“The second of the companions that the Son of God chose to associate with during His life on earth was a perfect self-contempt, a great abjection, and a shameful, voluntary, and extreme ignominy that He wished to endure continually here below.
For He chose to live as a servant and as a lowly slave whom no one would deign to claim or protect, and even as the most wicked and lost of slaves. Thus we see how He was driven out, exiled, insulted, mocked, bound, struck, beaten, scourged, and finally, with no one caring to defend Him or to listen to reason on His behalf, was placed as a vile and miserable slave among the wicked and the thieves, condemned with them, and punished like them with the ultimate torment — by a death most infamous and most shameful…
But alas, alas! Where can one now find anyone who cherishes this inheritance and this fellowship of the Son of God? Where can one find people who flee from honors and love the shame bound up with poverty, with lowly conditions, with menial tasks, and with all things that humiliate? Where can one find those who feel no aversion to being reduced to nothing, brought low, and despised?”