The Worm of Pride
Augustine said:
‘We must avoid pride. If it was able to deceive angels, how much more will it be able to scatter human wits.’
Ambrose said:
‘Pride transformed angels into demons, humility makes human beings into saints. Pride leads you to despise God’s commandments, humility urges you to follow them. The proud want to be praised even for what they have not done, the humble try to hide the good they do.’
Gregory said:
‘The one who is in the first place can never learn humility if he does not overcome pride when he is in the last.’
In The Lives of the Fathers it is said:
‘Fruit that is ruined is no use to the farmer; virtue that is proud is no use to God. Just as the weight of fruit breaks the branch, so pride smashes the beauty of the soul.’
Defensor Grammaticus Book of Sparkling Sayings, 17 (SC77 pp.258ff.
The New Pharisees
Christ himself accuses us of hypocrisy: ‘This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me.’ [Matt. 15:8-9]
Precisely these words that the Lord was speaking to reprove the Pharisees I feel he is speaking to us, the hypocrites of today who have been enriched with so much grace and yet have remained in a worse state than the hypocrites of yesterday.
Do not we also require others to carry crushing weights while we do not touch them even with a finger? Is it not possibly true that we too look for the best seats at banquets, the front places in meetings and like to be called experts? And do we not have a mortal hatred for anyone who does not offer us these honours?
Have not we too, perhaps, thrown away the key of true knowledge and shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in the face of other people, so that we neither enter it ourselves nor allow others to enter? [Luke 11:46, Matt. 23:6-7, 13]
Maximus the Confessor Ascetics, 35 (PG90, 940)
~ Thomas Spidlik, Drinking from the Hidden Fountain, A Patristic Breviary: Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World
