Aurora Magazine 2020

Aurora

Humility Noreen Gorman Perrone

On This date, January 27th some 45 years ago, I experienced the Virtue of Humility. It was a cold and cloudy day, a typical winter day in Chicago and my husband and I were driving downtown to receive our new baby daughter. Since we already had a child, a five- year old boy – our biological gift – we were not fretting about all the baby tasks a new parent does. (We would soon learn how much one forgets when there’s a long time between infants and how tired one is as parents of a newbie, even when you didn’t physically go through pregnancy and delivery.) It suddenly occurred to me that this baby might be less than physically attractive and unlike her brother we might have to make a conscious decision to say that she was a beautiful baby! When we got to Catholic charities, we met with the Social Workers and filled out some last minute papers and while it seemed interminably long, it wasn’t. Then Jim and I were escorted to the cozy little baby’s room with a crib and, there was this pretty, pink, fuzzy honey-haired little baby. We leaned over the crib and gawked until the Director said we could pick her up. And when I did and held her in my arms, I was overpowered by the deepest, fullest sense of total Humility. Here was this angel, a perfect little baby girl in my arms. I was so aware that God and a life- loving birth mother had given us a most precious gift – one that we had not earned (we didn’t have a lot of money) and we had not “made” her. I learned that such Humility is only God given, never self- achieved. There aren’t many life situations that impart so much joy, a happiness one doesn’t purchase or earn or even win by effort. In that little baby-room my overwhelming awareness must have been like the awe that Elizabeth experienced and the gratitude that Mary voiced in the Magnificat.

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