PaddlingPadre

For the Christian, there are few things that are so dangerous as spiritual pride, as is clearly displayed in this gospel. For consider this Pharisee and all the ways in which his pride blinds and misleads him. First, he prays not to God, but rather to himself, as our Lord says. This prayer, in other words, whereby he reassures himself that he is not like the rest of humanity, is not a prayer in any real sense, but is rather a mere talking to oneself – there is no true reference to God. Indeed, not only is this Pharisee merely talking to himself, but even the righteousness which he believes himself to possess he does not attribute to God’s grace, but rather to his own fasting and his own almsgiving, his own efforts. This Pharisee is thus praising himself for what he ultimately thinks to be his own accomplishment – there is no sense in his words of that posture of receptivity that we must always have towards the divine, no hint of his own status as a sinner who can do no good thing on his own, but who must rather depend on God in every moment for his salvation. In fact, you could even say that the Pharisee is making himself God, for what else is one doing if one prays to oneself and thinks oneself to be justified by one’s own efforts?

All of this is, of course, quite serious, but the thing that makes this Pharisee’s situation truly deadly is his ignorance of his actual condition. For if you were to ask him, he would certainly affirm that he is praying to God and he would certainly claim that he is justified, even when, from our perspective, we can clearly see that neither of these things are true. The tax collector, by contrast, at least knows his sin and can therefore pray to God for mercy, but this Pharisee does not even recognize his wickedness, and so cannot even ask for mercy. This, then, is the two-fold danger of spiritual pride: First, such pride cuts one off from true relationship with God, insofar as one becomes self-referential in one’s so-called prayers and comes to rely on one’s own works rather than on God’s grace, and, second, this pride blinds the one whom it afflicts so that he cannot even repent of it, for he does not recognize it in himself.

 Clearly then, if we are to take the teaching of this gospel to heart, we must be on our guard against falling into spiritual pride. But given this blinding tendency of spiritual pride of which we have just been speaking, how are we to recognize it in ourselves?

 The first way we can do so is to look to the opening words of this gospel. Are you convinced of your own righteousness? Do you despise others who, in your eyes, do not seem to be as spiritually advanced as yourself? These are, of course, rather obvious signs, but they are for that reason a clear signal that one is afflicted with this sort of pride, a pride that is far removed from that proper Christian attitude that we see, for instance, in St. Paul, who says to Timothy that he is, in his own eyes, the foremost of all sinners.

 Of course, spiritual pride is not always so obvious, and one of its subtler forms, I think, is sometimes encountered in the confessional, where a penitent might say something like, “I am basically a good person,” or “I don’t really sin very much.” There is spiritual pride in this insofar as one, in speaking these words, presumes to judge oneself, whereas in truth not even we, but only God alone, truly knows our hearts, and even if we are not conscious of anything against us, we do not, to again quote St. Paul, thereby stand acquitted.

 Or again, switching gears somewhat, it may be that spiritual pride manifests itself in a superstitious or controlling attitude with respect to prayer, and in at least two senses. To start with what is more evident, it is certainly spiritual pride if one mistakes prayer for magic, such that one comes to believe that by praying in a certain way or a certain amount one can, as it were, use God to get what one wants. And then, turning to what is less obvious and thus more dangerous, it is also spiritual pride if one thinks that one can, by praying in a certain way, guarantee spiritual consolations or religious experiences. This can especially be a danger in certain charismatic forms of prayer, which, while good in themselves, are perhaps, by virtue of their focus on more outward forms of expression and ecstasy, more prone to tempt us into thinking that the power of achieving such ecstasies lies within us, at least in the sense that we might falsely come to think that reaching or failing to reach such consolations has to do with the fervency of our prayer or the depth of our devotion, rather than on the completely gratuitous and unearned grace of God, which he gives to whom he wills and as he wills.

 What all of these instances of spiritual pride have in common, though, what lies at the heart of spiritual pride, is the abandonment of the spiritually humble posture of receptivity. For this is the truth of our being: we are creatures, not creators. To turn yet again to the words of St. Paul, What do you posses that you have not received? And if you have received it, why are you boasting as if you did not receive it? For we cannot save ourselves. We cannot, apart from the Spirit of God dwelling in us, be pleasing to God. We cannot will ourselves to spiritual consolations nor earn our way to justification. Rather, all of this is grace, all of this is gift, and our part is to receive this gift, for which reason we must always remain humble and with open hearts, never closing ourselves off to God by a misplaced sense of our own self-sufficiency, nor by a false self-assurance of our own security.

 And in this quest for humility, for it is spiritual humility which is the virtue opposed to the viciousness of spiritual pride, we have above all the great example and great help that is our Blessed Mother. For Mary is, one could say, entirely defined by her receptivity to God. From her Immaculate Conception to her Assumption, she is in every moment marked by her fiat, by that supreme instance of receptivity in which she responds to God’s invitation with the words, Be it done unto me according to thy will, and becomes thereby the Bearer of the Word, the Mother of God, the Queen of Heaven, not on account of what she has done, but rather on account of what God has done in her, the complement of which is Mary’s complete and total humility and receptivity before God.

It is our task then, as far as we are able, to approximate Mary’s fiat in our own lives, to, like her, become as totally receptive as we may to the will of God, to allow him to fill us utterly with his graces and to transform us from the very depths of our being. For the Christian who desires such sanctification, it is impossible to be self-absorbed – our attention must rather be entirely on Him, entirely on God. And then, with our eyes thusly fixed on Him whose is our life and our hope and our joy, we will discover that pride can find in us no opening.