Pride

‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken Me.’ (Math 27-46)

‘Pride is an ordinate love of one’s excellence, either of body or mind or the unlawful pleasures we derive from thinking we have no superiors.’ 

‘The victory of David symbolized the reality of Good Friday. Pride is Goliath. Our Lord is the humble David who comes to slay pride with the staff of His Cross and five little stones-five wounds, in hands, feet, amd side. With no other weapons than these five wounds and the staff of the Cross do we gain the victories over the Goliath of pride on the battlefield of our soul.’ 

‘Pride manifests itself in many forms: atheism, which is a denial of our dependence on God, our Creator…Pride it was that made Satan fall from Heaven and man from grace.’ 

Jesus chose humility to do reparation for the sin of pride. ‘He chose to appear before men in a stable as a child wrapped in a swaddling bands…the humility of His profession- as carpenter in an obscure village of Nazareth…Humility of His example who on Holy Thursday ‘girds himself with a towel, gets down on His knee, and, with basin and water, washes the twenty-four calloused feet of His Apostles.’ 

Most of all ‘the supreme humiliation of all was the manner of death He choose , for ‘He humbled Himself…even to the death of a cross.’…’To atone for a false pride of ancestry, He thrust aside the consolation of divinity; for pride of popularity. He is laughed to scorn as He hangs cursed upon a tree.’ 

Sheen writes ‘Surely anyone who has had experience with the proud will bear witness to the truth of this statement: if my own eternal salvation were conditioned upon saving the soul of one self-wise man who prided himself on his learning, or one hundred if the most morally corrupt men and women of the street, I would choose the easier task of converting the hundred. Nothing is more difficult to conquer in all world than intellectual pride.’ 

When we are small humble ..the world is large and full of wonder. 

Humility is truth. That everything we have is a gift from God.