By directing its power toward destruction of this support on which the sinner’s selfishness has established itself and rests, divine, salvific grace carries out the following to awaken the sinner from his slumber: He who is enslaved by pleasing the flesh shall fall ill, and by weakening the flesh, shall give the spirit freedom and power to come to its senses and become sober. He who is preoccupied with his own attractiveness and strength shall be deprived of this attractiveness and kept in a state of utter exhaustion. He who finds refuge in his own power and strength shall be subject to slavery and humiliation. He who relies greatly on wealth shall have it taken from him. He who shows off great learnedness shall be put to shame. He who relies on solid personal connections shall have them cut off. He who counts on the permanence of the order established around him shall have it destroyed by the death of people he knows or the loss of essential material possessions. Is there any way to sober up those kept in the bonds of indifference through outward happiness other than by sorrows and grief? Isn’t our life filled with misfortunes so that it may assist with the divine intention of keeping us sober?
Each destruction of the supports of indifferent self-indulgence constitutes a turning point in life, which, because it is always unexpected, operates in an overwhelming and salvific manner. The sense that one’s life is in danger operates strongest of all in this respect. This sense weakens all bonds and kills selfishness at the very root; the person does not know where to run. The sense of total abandonment is of the same character and special circumstance. Both sense leave a person alone with himself. From himself, the most miserable of creatures, he immediately turns to God.
—St. Theophan the Recluse, The Path to Salvation: A Manual of Spiritual Transformation
Category: PRIDE
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From the beginning, two inner voices have been speaking to me: one saying, “Henri, be sure you make it on your own. Be sure you become an independent person. Be sure I can be proud of you,” and another voice saying, “Henri, whatever you are going to do, even if you don’t do anything very interesting in the eyes of the world, be sure you stay close to the heart of Jesus; be sure you stay close to the love of God.”
—Henri Nouwen, Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life -
From The Screwtape Letters—a fictional work written from a senior demon’s perspective, advising a junior tempter.
Only by our incessant efforts is the demand for infinite, or unrhythmical, change kept up.
This demand is valuable in various ways. In the first place it diminishes pleasure while increasing desire. The pleasure of novelty is by its very nature more subject than any other to the law of diminishing returns. And continued novelty costs money, so that the desire for it spells avarice or unhappiness or both. And again, the more rapacious this desire, the sooner it must eat up all the innocent sources of pleasure and pass on to those the Enemy forbids. Thus by inflaming the horror of the Same Old Thing we have recently made the Arts, for example, less dangerous to us than perhaps, they have ever been, ‘low-brow’ and ‘high-brow’ artists alike being now daily drawn into fresh, and still fresh, excesses of lasciviousness, unreason, cruelty, and pride.
The Screwtape Letters
C. S. Lewis -
From The Screwtape Letters—a fictional work written from a senior demon’s perspective, advising a junior tempter.
The Enemy wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another.
The Screwtape Letters
C. S. Lewis -
Grace does not depart from a person completely, but only partially, for a period of time. Sometimes if a person becomes proud, grace withdraws, so the person falls, recognizing his own weakness, and therefore he does not go back to being prideful. In this case, this withdrawal is a kind of medicine. Other times, grace withdraws a little as a form of divine providence so the person yearns for grace, prays for grace, thus in the process they grow in prayer, giving thanks to God for responding to their petitions, while not slacking, struggling, and so on.
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Struggle and Grace -
Another little fox—self-righteousness—entered into Job. Job’s problem was that he was a blameless, upright man, and he knew himself to be blameless and upright. For this reason he fell into self-righteousness. He was, as the Bible says, “righteous in his own eyes” (Job 32.1). God kept purifying him through temptation until he said: “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know” (Job 42.3). It is very easy for a small weak point to drag us to many problems.
—H.H. Pope Shenouda III, The Life of Repentance and Purity -
I am speaking of the selfishness of good people, devout people, those who have succeeded through spiritual exercises and self-denial in being able to make the proud profession before the altar of the Most High, “Lord, I am not like the rest of men.” Yes, we have had the audacity at certain times of our lives to believe we are different from other men. And here is the deepest form of self-deception, dictated by self-centeredness at its worst: spiritual egotism. This most insidious form of egotism even uses piety and prayer for its own gain.
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There is no limit to such self-deception. And the path, once entered upon, is so slippery that God has to treat us harshly to bring us back to our senses. But there is no other way of opening our eyes. It has to be painful. But often it isn’t enough. Disaster, illness, disappointment hover like birds of prey over the poor carcass that had the temerity to say, “Lord, I am not like the rest of men.” How can we possibly entertain the idea that we are different from other men, when we shout, cry, feel afraid, lack determination, and behave atrociously just like everybody else?
Letters from the Desert
by Carlo Carretto -
The first sign of pride is to measure the other by your yardstick
by Archpriest Sergei Filimonov.Why do we show dissatisfaction with others? Why are we annoyed with them or are angry? There are several reasons for this. First, we measure another person with our yardstick. When we are healthy, when our heart beats smoothly, normal pressure, when both eyes see and both knees bend, we can not understand another person who feels bad. Our character is equal, but maybe that person is a choleric person, or vice versa – he is calmer and more pragmatic than we are.
“I”, which reigns in our heart, makes us look at other people through the prism of our own physical, mental and spiritual properties, and we involuntarily consider ourselves a stencil, a model for others. From this, a storm begins in my soul: I do, but he does not; I do not get tired, but he complains that he is tired; I sleep five hours, and you see, eight hours are not enough for him; I work tirelessly, but he shirks and early leaves to sleep. This is characteristic of a proud person; namely the proud says: “Why am I doing this, but he does not? Why do I keep it, but he does not? Why can I, but he can not cope? ”
But the Lord created all people different. Each of us has our own life, our own way of life, our life situations. Well-fed does not understand, a healthy patient will never understand. A person who does not pass through troubles and temptations will not understand the grieving person. A happy father will not understand an orphaned child who has lost his father. The bride will not understand the divorced. A person who has parents alive will not understand the one who just buried his mother. One can theorize, but there is a practice of life. We often do not have life experience, and when we start to find it, we remember those who were condemned, with whom we were strict. We did not understand what this man was feeling. We tried to edify him, but he was not up to remarks. His hands sank with grief, his soul was mourning, he did not need moral teachings and high-flown words. All he needed was sympathy, compassion and consolation, but we did not understand it. And when the Lord conducts us through the same, we begin to feel what the other person felt.
Here is one of the signs of pride – we measure other people by our yardstick. When we do this, it shows that there is no magnanimity in us. And all that is needed is to try not to condemn another person, not to be irritated, but to accept him as he is. But it is difficult.
SO GOOD QUOTES 