Good point. Perhaps the folks in the photo simply embrace the Virtue of Humility.
Come on, you know better than that. The greatest saints of the Church have been the most humble and the most joyful. Some have had a wondeful sense of humour.
Remember St. Francis dancing and playing a tamborine in front of the Blessed Sacrament when it was exposed. He sang for joy and laughed. That’s how joyful he was to be in the presence of his Lord.
Remember St. Teresa of Avila’s sense of humour and how she teased the Lord. Everytime she had a grave difficulty she looked at the Blessed Sacrament and said, “Don’t complain if you have few friends.”
Remember Bl. Mother Teresa of Calcutta who wrote in her rule that the sisters must always smile and if they were not in the mood for smiling they should remain in their rooms until they recovered their smile. The only time that we ever saw Mother not smiling was when she was praying or when she was delivering a lecture.
Remember Bl. John XXII who was seated next to the French President’s wife and offered her an apple three time. Apparently she was wearing a rather revealing dress. When she asked him why he insisted that she eat the apple he responded, “Madam, it was not until Eve ate the apple that she realized that she was naked.”
Rememer St. Vincent de Paul, when his Daughters of Charity went out to serve the poor they wore nun’s habits. He walked into a hospital and took a pair of scissors and cut their veils and scapulars. When Louise de Marillac asked him why he had done this, he smiled and said, those things are getting in the way of charity, get them off and he made them wear the secular dress of the common French nurse. He left the hospital feeling very proud of his own mischief. That’s why the daughters of chrity wore coronets and a white collar to the waist. It used to be a white veil and a white scapular to the floor.
Read the letters between Francis de Sales and Jane de Chantal. They are full of teasing back and forth.
When Francis of Assisi was near death he asked to be made more like Christ. Christ granted his prayer by imprinting his body with the Stigmata. St. Clare came to bring him soup. When she saw the stigmata, she looked at Francis and said, “Have you had enough?” She wasn’t talking about the soup. Her biographers say that she said it with a smile in her voice.
So the greatest of saints had a wondeful sense of humor and humility.
JR
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