Oh Jesus, meek and humble of heart, touch our hearts and make them like unto Thine.
No one would ever describe Tony Stark as humble. In fact, one could probably look up the word arrogant in the dictionary and there would be a picture of Tony Stark at the beginning of the first Iron Man movie. His hero’s journey through the nine films of the Infinity Saga in which he appears is one of being consistently humbled, often as a result of his own bravado.
The first does of humility comes when he is kidnapped in the first act of Iron Man, where his fellow prisoner Yinsen sacrifices his life so Tony can escape. Yinsen’s last words, “Don’t waste your life, Stark,” profoundly affect Tony and drive him to become Iron Man. In order to keep the shrapnel in his chest from reaching his heart, Tony creates a miniature ARC reactor that he then uses to power his Iron Man suit. After his assistant (and future wife) Pepper Potts helps him to replace the original for a new one, she uses the original to create gift for him with the joking but endearing inscription “Proof that Tony Stark has a heart.”
Although somewhat humbled, Tony Stark’s success and newfound celebrity as Iron Man bring back his old bravado. This is on full display when he testifies before Congress in Iron Man 2 and refuses to hand over the Iron Man suit to the government. Nevertheless, his apparent arrogance is concealing the secret that the palladium in his ARC reactor is not-so slowly poisoning him and he has been unable to find a suitable substitute. The resultant existential crisis leads to him drunkenly embarrassing himself at his birthday party, wrecking his house and having one of his suits taken by his best-friend Col. James “Rhodey” Rhodes. Although he and Rhodey inevitably defeat the villains, at the end of the film Nick Fury informs Tony that he is no longer interested in him for the Avengers Initiative because he does not work well with others.
This changes, of course, in The Avengers when Fury has to call Tony in because Loki has stolen the Tesseract. Tony’s personality instantly grates on Steve Rogers, whose defining personality trait is selflessness. As Loki’s Scepter heightens the conflict between all the members of the team, Steve angrily tells Tony, “You’re not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on the wire and let the other guy crawl over you.” Of course, only a man with arrogance like Tony Stark would actually go, face down Loki alone and speak to him in the way that he does but Steve’s still affect Tony and lead to him taking the nuke launched at New York to destroy Loki’s army into space, fully believing that it was a “one way trip.”
Pride and arrogance
Tony’s experiences in The Battle of New York give him PTSD with which he must struggle in Iron Man 3. In fact, the entire plot of the film is a reckoning of Tony’s pride and arrogance. The main conflict is driven by Aldrich Killian and Maya Hansen seeking revenge on Tony for the way he treated them in the past. Moreover, when Tony reacts with characteristic bravado and delivers a televised threat to the Mandarin (whom Killian is masquerading as) that includes his home address, helicopter gunships destroy his house, nearly killing both him and Pepper.
While he seems to have turned over a new leaf at the end of Iron Man 3, the second Avengers movie, Age of Ultron, Tony must come to terms once again with his pride. After the Artificial Intelligence program he has created to protect the world decides that the biggest threat to the planet is humanity itself, both Steve Rogers and Thor confront Tony on his arrogance in even thinking he could successfully design such a program. In Captain America: Civil War, Tony is a broken man. He and Pepper have apparently broken up, and he is ready to submit to governmental oversight of the Avengers, largely due to being consumed with guilt after being confronted by the mother of a young man who died in Sokovia during the final battle against Ultron. Notably during the fight against Thanos on Titan in Avengers: Infinity War, Tony becomes angry with Dr. Stephen Strange when the latter surrenders the Time Stone to Thanos in order to save Tony’s life after he is seriously wounded. Strange explains that Tony being alive was “the only way” for them to win against Thanos, but it is clear that Tony was more than willing to die. This only exacerbates his survivor’s guilt when he and Nebula are the ones on Titan who survive the Blip and Peter Parker turns to dust in Tony’s arms.
Legacy of Tony’s heart
It was revealed at the end of Spider-Man: Homecoming that Tony and Pepper had reconciled and during the five year time-jump in Avengers: Endgame, they marry and have a daughter. Tony is reluctant to join the other Avengers in attempting to reverse the Blip because he is afraid of losing his family. Although, this may seem somewhat selfish, a father and husband’s first duty is to his wife and children. Once he has figured out a way to bring everyone back who was “dusted” in the Blip without changing anything else, he sets about on his plan to accomplish this. When Thanos arrives from the past and states his intention to eliminate not just half of life in the universe but all of it, in order to create a new one, Tony fights him to save his family and ultimately lays down his life to save not only them, but the entire world. At his memorial service, the Proof That Tony Stark Has a Heart is placed in the water as a last testament to him and his legacy.
The source of all humility, the Sacred Heart of Jesus
The ARC reactor that is over his heart and powers his suit is arguably the greatest symbol of Tony’s identity as Iron Man, even more than his mask. Similarly, the Sacred Heart is the greatest symbol of Christ’s love for us: pierced by the lance, surrounded by a crown of thorns, topped by a cross and aflame with love. It was this love that motivated Our Lord to, as St. Paul writes in his epistle to the Ephesians “Humble Himself to the point of death, even death on the Cross.” Of course, unlike Tony, Christ never had to be humbled but humbled Himself. Nevertheless, in both cases, it is profound humility that leads one to demonstrate the kind of self-sacrificing love that can save the world. And in both cases, it is the heart that is a symbol of this love and a memorial of the sacrifice motivated by it.
Thomas J. McIntyre
Thomas J. McIntyre is a teacher and amateur historian. He holds an MA in History from Georgia Southern University. In addition to the Voyage blog, he writes for Catholic 365 and on his personal blog "Pope Damasus and the Saints." He resides in Louisiana with his wife Nancy-Leigh and daughters Kateri and Alice.