Pride and humility.

Maybe you have asked yourself these similar questions: why do I like some people so much? Why do I feel so comfortable and pleasant in the presence of some people? The book of Ecclesiastes reminds us of pride as “the beginning of all sin.”

In the incident in the Gospel where the words “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?” (Luke 14:3), they could not answer him. The words he spoke in the house of a leading Pharisee. They were words of sound judgment that all could accept. They did not take them. Why? Were they proud? The Lord Jesus only recalls all the familiar things. But if we only read the Gospel superficially, we could say that the Lord Jesus commends more modesty. It is true: The greater you are, the humbler you are, and you will find favor with the Lord. These words already give quite another meaning. They are such solemn words that he wrote: Woe to the proud! There is no remedy for the wounds of the proud, for wickedness has taken root in them.

Let us pause over the power and wickedness of pride. What pride is, every one of us knows. It is pride that makes this or that person so unsympathetic, antipathetic, and disgusting. But the worst part of the whole thing is that the proud, precisely because of his pride, cannot discover this vice of his. There is a piece of tragedy in this. Everybody likes a modest person, even if they don’t always admire him. Nobody likes a proud man, even if they sometimes admire him. What is pride? And what is humility? We can intuit rather than conceptually define that. Proud man: Living with a proud man takes only an hour or two, and an unpleasant feeling takes hold of us. We can’t always name it right away, but on more careful reflection, we discover that it is that unfortunate vice. The proud one makes life unpleasant not only for others but also for himself. He is highly vulnerable. Any little thing robs him of peace, security, joy, and pleasant feelings. Conviction of his importance, achievements, abilities, and merits, supposedly of his rightful claims and needs, makes him sensitive, irritable, and intolerant. He regards involuntary inattention as deliberate. A realistic appraisal of his actions as disrespectful and unjust. Criticism of his character and person for unfair prejudice and envy. Rebuke for insult. In his own eyes, he is a proud man of good character, remarkable to excellent, always willing to engage in a good cause, honest, loyal, considerate, and even modest; in short, he is a perfect man and a model of all virtues. A proud man repeats: though I, too, have my faults. But woe betide him if someone throws them in his face!

Pride as a vice has been named and known by all cultured peoples, but humility as a virtue pleasing to men and God is found only in biblical revelation in the Holy Scriptures. St. James writes: “God resisted the proud, but given grace to the humble” (Joh 4:6). Does God oppose the proud? Does He, like men, have His sympathies and antipathies? We can justify precisely why we dislike this or that person.