0

The early fathers of the Catholic Church compiled a list of what they called “the seven deadly sins.”  Number one on that list was the sin of pride.  I doubt that you and I would have done it that way.  We may recognize that pride is indeed a sin, but most of us would not think of it as the first and worst of the deadly sins.  I can think of at least three sins that most of us consider to be more serious than the sin of pride – murder, adultery, and stealing.

And is there not a sense in which pride can be a good thing?  I heard of an old Scotsman whose morning prayer was the same: “Lord, help me this day to hold a high opinion of myself.”  That kind of pride is a grace; we all need it.  Too many people go out each day holding a low opinion of themselves, and the result is that they live down to it.

So why all the fuss about pride? Why did the prophets and apostles denounce it so sternly?  Why has the Church historically warned us against it?  What’s so bad about it?  Well, one of the things that makes the sin of pride so deadly is that its so subtle that we can be guilty of it without even realizing it.  Are we everything that a good Catholic out to be?  Or is a spiritual cancer eating away at our very soul.

Let’s take a test.  Search your heart for a few minutes with this question: Is there any person or group of people anywhere whom you stand above, look down upon, or consider yourself to be better than they are?

It may be a matter of race.  Do you ever find yourself thinking that people whose skin is a different shade are not quite as good or as worthy as you are?  What attitude constitutes the sin of racial pride that had filled the earth with tension and soaked its soil in blood for thousands of years.

It may be a matter of moral and ethical behavior.  How easy it is for those of us who are sober to look with contempt on the alcoholics and the drug addicts.  Surely, we must be better people than they are.  How logical it seems to those of us who live within the law to look with contempt upon our prison population.  Can there be any doubt in our minds that we are a finer breed of Christian than they are?

So let us look at what pride does to people.  It divides people and builds a wall of separation between them.  It thereby also separates us from God who taught us to love everyone.  Remember that one of the  constantly recurring themes in the bible tells us that we cannot be right with God and wrong with people at the same time.  We need to understand that if we keep in mind that God is our Father, then all people are His sons and daughters and our brothers and sisters.

It would seem that the Church fathers were right.  Pride is a deadly sin.  It creeps into our lives and does its venomous work, separating us from one another and from God.  Check your feelings.  If they are out of control then we need to change.  With God’s help and with our personal reflection it can happen.  We need to put it into practice today. It depends on you today.