Litany of Humility

The Litany of Humility is one of the most searching prayers in the Catholic tradition — a slow, deliberate stripping away of pride, petition by petition. It is long attributed to Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val (1865–1930), the brilliant Secretary of State to Pope St. Pius X, who is said to have prayed it daily as his own thanksgiving after Mass. In truth a nearly identical litany was already circulating in English and French decades before him — it appears in print by the 1860s — so its true author is unknown, and Merry del Val cherished and spread the prayer rather than composed it.

The prayer moves in three movements. First it asks deliverance from disordered desires — to be esteemed, loved, honored, praised, preferred. Then from fears — of humiliation, contempt, rebuke, being forgotten or ridiculed. These first two movements would be enough to humble anyone. But the third movement is the hardest and the most Christlike: it does not merely ask to be freed from wanting glory, but for the grace to desire that others be preferred, praised, and chosen above oneself — "that others may increase and I may decrease."

Here the litany deliberately echoes St. John the Baptist, who said of Christ, "He must increase, but I must decrease" (John 3:30). Humility, the prayer teaches, is not thinking less of oneself but thinking of oneself less — and finally rejoicing when others are lifted up. It is placed among the aids to purity and vocation because pride is the root from which so many sins, including impurity, draw their strength; the humble heart is the pure and free heart.