PRIDE

The fourth word from the cross was in reparation for the sin of pride. Pride is an inordinate love of one’s own excellence, either of body or mind or the unlawful pleasure we derive from thinking we have no superiors. Pride being swollen egotism, it erects the human evil into a separate centre of originativeness apart from God; exaggerates its own importance and becomes a world in and for itself. All other sins are evil deeds, but pride insinuates itself even into good works to destroy and slay them. For that reason Sacred Scripture says: “Pride goes before the fall” (Prov.11:2).

         Pride manifests itself in many forms: atheism, which is a denial of our dependence on God, our Creator and our final end; intellectual vanity, which makes minds unteachable because they think they know all there is to know; superficiality, which judges others by their clothes, their accent and their bank account; snobbery, which sneers at inferiors as the earmark of its own superiority, “they are not of our social status”; vainglory, which prompts some Catholic parents to refuse to send their boys and girls to Catholic colleges because they would there associate only with the children of carpenters; presumptuousness, which inclines a man to seek honors and positions quite beyond his capacity and exaggerated sensitiveness which makes one incapable of moral improvement because so unwilling to hear one’s own faults.

     Pride it was that made Satan fall from heaven and man fall from grace. By its very nature such undue self-exaltation could be cured only by self-humiliation. That is why He who might have  been born in a palace by the Tiber as befitting His Majesty as the Son of God, chose to appear before men in a stable as a child wrapped in swaddling bands. Added to this humility of His birth was the humility of His profession – a carpenter in an obscure village of Nazareth whose name was a reproach among the great. Just as today there are those who sneer at the humble walks of life, so too there were then those who jibed: “Is this not the carpenter’s son?” There was also the humility of His actions, for never once did He work a miracle in His own behalf, not even to supply Himself with a place to lay His head. Humility of example there was too, when on Holy Thursday night He who is the Lord of heaven and earth girds Himself with a towel, gets down on His knees and with basin and water washes the twenty-four calloused feet of His Apostles saying: “The servant is not greater than his lord… If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you too should wash each other’s feet” (Jn.13:16, 14). Finally, there was humility of precept: “Unless you be converted and become as little children, you shall not enter the kingdom of Heaven” {Mtt.19:14}.  

       But the supreme humiliation of all was the manner of death He chose, for “He humbled Himself… even to death, death on a cross” {Phil.2:8}. To atone for false pride of ancestry: he thrusts aside the consolation of Divinity; for the pride of popularity: He is laughed to scorn as he hangs curse upon a tree (Gal.3:13); for pride of snobbery: He is put in the company of thieves [Lk.23:33]; for pride of wealth: He is denied even the ownership of His own deathbed {Mtt.27:59-60}; for pride of flesh: “there was no beauty in him” for pride in influential friends: he is forgotten even by those whom He cured; for pride of power: He is weak and abandoned; for pride of those who surrender God and their faith: He wills to feel without God. For all the egotism, false independence and atheism: He now offers satisfaction by surrendering the joys and consolations of His Divine Nature. Because proud men forgot God, He permits Himself to feel Godlessness and it broke His heart in the saddest of all cries: “…My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” (Mtt.27:46). There was union even in the separation; but they were words of desolation uttered that we might never be without consolation.

      Two lessons emerge from this Word: (1) Glory not in ourselves for God resists the proud; and (2) Glory in humility for humility is truth and the path to true greatness.

     Why should we be proud? As St. Paul reminds us “what do you have that you have that you didn’t receive? And if you received it, why do you boast, as if it were your own?” Is it our voice, our wealth, our beauty, our talents of which we are proud? But what are these but gifts of God, anyone of which He might revoke this second? From a material point of view, we are worth so little. The content of a human body is equivalent to as much iron as there is in a nail, as much sugar as there is in two lumps, as much oil as there is in seven bars of soap, as much phosphorous as there is in 2200 matches and as much magnesium as it takes to develop one photograph. In all, the human body, chemically, is worth a little less than two dollars – “O why should any mortal spirit be proud?” But spiritually we are worth more than the universe (‘Children, you are from God and have overcome them, because he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world’ 1 Jn.4:4) therefore “For what profit is there if one gains the whole world and loses himself in the process? What could one give in exchange for his soul?

ADMONITION:

“You have already been told what is right and what the Lord wants of you. Only this, to do what is right, to love loyalty and to walk humbly with your God” [Micah 6:8]