Week one - Getting to know yourself - Day 6

Pride

Prayer to the Holy Spirit 

O Holy Spirit, inspire me. God’s love, engulf me. Holy Mary, my Mother, guide me in the right ways, look at me, and together with Jesus, bless me. Keep me from all evil, from all delusions and all threats. Mary, The Spouse of the Holy Spirit, obtain for me the grace of getting to know myself, repenting, faith and humility. Amen!

The Word of God 

“He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt:  Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’  But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted” (Lk 18:9‒14).

Meditation 

The original sin echoes the devil’s claim: I will not serve. As man succumbed to this temptation and decided it would be better to do things his way, our life has been subjected to the self we have served since then. That’s when people looked away from God’s will and focused on what their self wanted. This is the source of man’s pride.

Pride is the root of all deadly sins: greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. Sins are the act of defying God, which our conscience recognizes as something wrong. But there are also more subtle levels of the sin of pride—they are seen in different kinds of attachments toward oneself. To some extent, each of us is attached to our way of thinking, beliefs and ideas. This is seen most clearly in the situations when something goes wrong. We are concerned and worried then, speculating and thinking about what would be the worst thing that might happen. Where do these thoughts come from? A characteristic sign of pride is self-interest. Even our love becomes self-interest. It often happens that other people love us when we meet their expectations.

When we cannot do it, some people will make a fuss about it, others will label us, and yet others will reject us. People love us as long as we meet their expectations.

And if we don’t meet them, well… To be honest, we also treat others like that—we keep close to those who meet our expectations and keep a distance from others. This shows only one thing: we are self-interested. Oriented to get personal gains, we always ask what we will get from it. It doesn’t have to be material advantages; it can be emotional gratification, appreciation, being noticed, praised, comfort and convenience. We say we love others, but deep down, we start using other people to make us feel good.

“Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin” (Jn 8:34). Sin makes me a slave of sin, takes away my inner freedom, and leads me into enslavement that may have a form of addiction, for instance. On the more subtle levels of functioning, I may become a slave of such a way of thinking in which I am trained by the fear of rejection, and I have to defend myself all the time—my opinion, my boundaries—so that others don’t push them. The other people start to be my opponents who come to snatch something from me and take it away. This is a great lie. Our minds fight this is enormous battle for whom we listen to. We often listen to our thoughts that stem from false beliefs about ourselves, i.e., those that don’t come from God. Such behaviours echo a demonic cry that made rebelling angels to be knocked down from the heavens. This cry is: I will not serve (łac. non serviam)! I will not serve God; I want to serve myself; I want my ideas and dreams to be realized; I know better what it should be like; I will do everything my way; I will write my ten commandments, my own rules that I will use in life.

Humility in Mary’s life: Mary crashed the pride of Satan with her humility and regained what Eve lost. In Magnificat, she humbly admits that she got everything from God. “For he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant” (Lk 1:48). The humble heart assesses what it gets from God in the right light. On the one hand, Mary sees in truth that she didn’t insult God in anything; on the other hand, she even more recognizes her nothingness as a creature in relation to the Creator and humbles before Him even more.

Spiritual struggle: what does it consist in? Whenever you are upset, angry, or anxious, ask for the light of the Holy Spirit to show you if you are not blindly attached to a false belief that you are right.

Spiritual reading 

“If you make a blunder which brings a cross upon you, whether it be inadvertently or even through your own fault, bow down under the mighty hand of God without delay, and as far as possible do not worry over it. You might say within yourself, ‘Lord, here is a sample of my handiwork.’ If there is anything wrong in what you have done, accept the humiliation as a punishment for it; if it was not sinful, accept it as a means of humbling your pride. Frequently, even very frequently, God allows his greatest servants, those far advanced in holiness, to fall into the most humiliating faults so as to humble them in their own eyes and in the eyes of others. He thus keeps them from thoughts of pride in which they might indulge because of the graces they have received, or the good they are doing, so that ‘no-one can boast in God’s presence.’” 

St. Louis de Montfort, Letter to the Friends of the Cross, 46

Homework 

I will ask Mary to help me understand that I belong to God in everything that happens. 

Prayer of consecration 

I am all Yours, and all that I have is Yours, O most loving Christ, through Mary, Your most holy Mother. Amen!