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Illustration: The Fall of Man by Peter Paul Rubens, 1628–29
Pope Francis’ Catechesis. Vices and virtues. 10. Pride
St. Peter’s Square – Wednesday, 6 March 2024
Scripture Reading (Sirach 10:7-14)
Arrogance is hateful before the Lord and before men, and injustice is outrageous to both . . . How can he who is dust and ashes be proud? . . . The beginning of man’s pride is to depart from the Lord; his heart has forsaken his Maker. . . The Lord has cast down the thrones of rulers, and has seated the lowly in their place.
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
In our catechesis on vices and virtues, we come today to the last of the vices: pride.
The ancient Greeks defined it with a word that could be translated as “excessive splendour”.
In fact, pride is self-aggrandizement, presumption, vanity.
The term also appears in that list of vices that Jesus lists to explain that evil always comes from the human heart (cf. Mk 7:21-22 – For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, fornication, theft, murder, adultery, 22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.).
The proud person is one who thinks he is much more than he really is; one who trembles to be recognized as greater than others, always wants his own merits to be recognized, and who despises others as inferior.
From this first description, we see that the vice of pride is very close to that of vainglory, which we have already presented last time.
But if vainglory is a disease of the human ego, it is still an infantile disease when compared with the devastation of which pride is capable.
In analyzing the follies of man, the monks of antiquity recognized a certain order in the sequence of evils: starting with the grossest sins, such as gluttony, to arrive at the most disturbing monsters.
Of all vices, pride is the great queen.
It is not by change that Dante places it in the first frame of Purgatory in the Divine Comedy. Yhose who indulge in to this vice are far from God, and the correction of this evil requires time and effort, more than any other battle to which the Christian is called.
In reality, radical sin, the absurd claim to be like God, is hidden within this evil.
The sin of our first parents, told in the book of Genesis, is essentially a sin of pride.
The tempter says to them: “ For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Gen 3:5).
Writers on spirituality are more careful to describe the effects of pride in everyday life, to illustrate how it ruins human relationships, to show how this evil poisons the sense of brotherhood that should unite people.
Here, then, is the long list of symptoms that reveal a person’s surrender to the vice of pride.
It is an evil with an obvious physical manifestation: the proud person is haughty, he has a “hard neck”, that is, a stiff neck that does not bend.
He is a man who is easy to condemn others: for no reason, he pronounces irrevocable sentences against others, who seem to him hopelessly incompetent and incapable.
In his arrogance, he forgets that Jesus gave us very few moral precepts in the Gospels, but on one of them he was intransigent: never judge others.
You realize you are dealing with a proud man when, in response to a small constructive criticism or a completely innocuous remark, he reacts in an exaggerated way, as if someone had offended his majesty: he gets angry, he screams, he breaks off relations with others in a resentful way.
There is little you can do with a person who is ill with pride.
It is impossible to talk to him, much less correct him, because deep down he is no longer present to himself. You just have to be patient with him, because one day his edifice will collapse.
There is an Italian saying: “Pride goes on horseback and returns on foot”.
In the Gospels, Jesus has to deal with many arrogant people, and he often went to flush out this vice even in people who hid it very well. Peter puts his faithfulness to the test: “Peter declared to him, “Though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away.“ (cf Mt 26:33). Soon, however, he would experience being like the others, afraid of death, which he had not imagined could be so near.
And so the second Peter, the one who no longer lifts his chin but weeps salty tears, will be cured by Jesus and will finally be able to bear the weight of the Church.
Before, he had shown a presumption that was better not to flaunt; but now he is a faithful disciple whom, as a parable says, the master “will set him over all his possessions.” (Lk 12:44).
Salvation passes through humility, the true remedy for every act of pride.
In the Magnificat, Mary sings of the God who, by his power, scatters the proud in the sick thoughts of their hearts.
It is useless to steal something from God, as the proud hope to do, because in the end He wants to give us everything.
For this reason, the Apostle James, writing to his community wounded by internal struggles arising from pride, says: ” God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (Jas 4:6).
So, dear brothers and sisters, let us take advantage of this Lent to fight against our pride.
