It was pride that brought down Satan and the other apostate angels. It was pride that brought down the human race in our First Parents. Pride turned angels into devils and Paradise into this vale of tears. St. Bernard of Clairvaux called pride “initium omnis peccati … the beginning of every sin” (De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae, 10.28. Pride ruins virtues because it appropriates God’s gifts and persuades the creature that he is their source.
Is there a vice which God hates more than pride?
What does pride do to the interior landscape of your soul? The venerable Baltimore Catechism says that pride begets “sinful ambition, vainglory, presumption and hypocrisy”. Pride can feed upon prayer, penance, learning, orthodoxy, liturgical devotion, and good works. It can dress itself in sacred vestments and occupy the place of honor while appearing to defend the seating arrangements.
On this 16th Sunday after Pentecost according to the calendar of the Vetus Ordo, the Church confronts this spiritual disease through a man whose body has become a visible image of the proud soul.
In Luke 14, Christ goes to the house of a ruler of the Pharisees for a Sabbath meal. Among those present are Pharisees and nomikoi, experts in the Law, “lawyers.” Such meals in the houses of prominent men could be semi-public occasions. People came, listened, and observed. On this occasion the observers are watching one particular Guest.
St. Luke says, ipsi observabant eum, “they were watching Him” (Luke 14:1). The Greek is “kaì autoì êsan parateroúmenoi autón… and they were watching Him closely.” The participle comes from parateréo, a verb that can signify close, even hostile, observation. The punctilious observers of the Law had bent their observance into surveillance of the Lawgiver. They scrutinized Christ’s every word and gesture in order to find something against Him.
Perhaps the man came because he knew Christ would be there. It is probable that the Pharisees had arranged for him to appear, knowing Christ might do precisely what He did: heal on the Sabbath.
Christ walked into the trap, triggered it, and snapped it shut on its setters.
Dropsy, or hydropsy, is edema, an abnormal accumulation of fluid in bodily tissue. It can cause the limbs and face to swell severely. One possible cause is congestive heart failure. The weakened heart cannot circulate blood adequately, and fluid leaks into surrounding tissue.
The Fathers and later spiritual writers saw in such swelling a figure of pride. The dropsical body becomes an exterior manifestation of the interior disease afflicting the men around the table. Pride inflates the heart while weakening its capacity to receive and circulate the life of grace. The dropsical man’s thirst increases as he drinks. The proud man’s appetite for recognition expands as it is indulged. Praise demands more praise. Influence seeks more influence and the place of honor never seems quite high enough.
Such an illness requires more than a cardiologist. It requires a Sacred Heart Doctor. If we rush to the emergency room when a bodily organ begins to fail, how swiftly ought we to seek the confessional when the heart of the soul is failing?
Jesus asked, “Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath, or not?” The lawyers and Pharisees remained silent. He took the man, healed him, and sent him away. Then He asked, “Which of you, having an ass or an ox that has fallen into a well, will not immediately pull him out on a sabbath day?” (Luke 14:3-5). An alternative manuscript tradition reads “a son or an ox.” The Latin Gospel used in the Mass has asinus aut bos, “an ass or an ox.” Cornelius a Lapide, the great Jesuit commentator, sees the ox as a figure of the wise and the ass as a figure of the foolish. The ox, placed beneath the yoke, signifies the Jews bearing the Law. The ass can signify the Gentiles living without the revealed Law. Christ came to draw both from the pit.
The learned and the simple, Jew and Gentile, stand equally in need of the Savior. No intelligence or scrupulosity enables fallen man to climb out by himself.
There is a practical lesson to be learned. Mercy cannot be postponed on the pretext of religion. It is always the right time to perform a genuine work of mercy. To leave a child or an animal in a well while debating Sabbath observance would be stupid and sinful. When an obvious opportunity reasonably to perform a corporal or spiritual work of mercy presents itself, we ought to act, lest convenience disguised as prudence become a sin of omission.
Opportunities for good works are blessings in disguise.
Having healed the swollen man, Christ addressed the swelling of the guests. The parable that followed could seem like a change of subject, but the dropsical man and the self-promoting guests suffer from the same disease. The healing of a man swollen with fluid took place amid men swollen with pride.
“When you are invited by any one to a marriage feast, do not sit down in a place of honor” (Luke 14:8). The man who promotes himself risks hearing, “Give place to this man,” and descending in shame. The man who takes the lowest place may hear, Amice, ascende superius, “Friend, go up higher” (Luke 14:10).
The lesson, the nimshal of the mashal, is given by Christ: “Every one who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14:11).
Humility is truth lived before God. It recognizes that every natural faculty, supernatural gift, opportunity to serve, and good fruit arises from His generosity. Humility does not require us to deny gifts God has bestowed. It requires us to recognize their source and purpose.
Pride converts stewardship into ownership, service into self-display, and gratitude into self-congratulation.
St. Gregory the Great identifies four ways in which pride corrupts our acknowledgment of the good:
Do these blotches not appear upon our swollen hearts? We take credit for abilities received from God. We treat grace as payment for our imagined excellence. We pretend to knowledge or virtue that we lack. We compare ourselves with others in order to depreciate them.
Pride can inhabit even a defense of sacred things. One may defend them for God’s glory, or use them to build a throne for oneself.
The exterior activity may look identical while the inner man is radically different.
The Collect for the Mass gives the remedy:
gratia semper et praeveniat et sequatur,
ac bonis operibus iugiter praestet esse intentos.
This is a lovely prayer to sing. The hyperbaton separates tua from gratia, although the words belong together: “Your grace.” The balanced et praeveniat et sequatur, “both go before and follow,” places our action within God’s action. The conjunction ac then moves the prayer toward its purpose, that we remain bonis operibus iugiter intentos, “continuously intent upon good works.” Even iugiter, “continually,” can suggest iugum, “yoke,” and recall the ox in the Gospel.
LITERAL RENDERING:
that Your grace may always both go before us and follow after us,
and continuously grant us to be intent upon good works.
Tua gratia, “Your grace,” is the subject of every verb. Grace goes before. Grace follows after. Grace awakens the will, enables its free response, accompanies the work, and guides it to completion. Our deeds are God’s gifts through and through, yet they are truly our deeds because we knowingly and freely cooperate with Him.
The paired verbs recall a blessing I heard at my home parish every Tuesday evening after the communal Novena of Our Mother of Perpetual Help:
Before us, behind us, within us, above us: grace surrounds the Christian life. It frees and elevates our freedom so that we can act as God’s knowing, willing, and loving servants. St. Augustine wrote: Cum Deus coronat merita nostra, nihil aliud coronat quam munera sua, “When God crowns our merits, He crowns nothing other than His own gifts” (ep. 194.5.19, to Sixtus).
The Collect corresponds both to the healing and to the banquet. Prevenient grace finds us swollen and helpless. It reaches us before we can heal ourselves. Subsequent grace accompanies us as we take the lower place, draw our neighbor from the pit, and persevere in charity. At last, the divine Host says, “Ascende superius… Come up higher.”
The Epistle from Ephesians 3:13-21, carries us more deeply into the same mystery. This Sunday was once reckoned as the first after the natale, the heavenly birthday or martyrdom, of St. Cyprian of Carthage, beheaded around this time of year on 14 September 258 during the persecution of Valerian. The Roman series of Epistles now turns to Ephesians and continues through the 23rd Sunday, excepting the 18th, formerly associated with the long rites following September Ember Saturday.
Paul probably wrote Ephesians during his first Roman imprisonment around AD 62. He had labored at Ephesus, a major commercial and communications center in Asia Minor. Roads, ports, and markets were the technology of the day: establish a Church there and the Gospel would travel outward with merchants, pilgrims, soldiers, and letters.
Paul begins with suffering: “I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory” (Eph 3:13). Then he kneels. “For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (vv. 14-15). His theological instruction is framed as intercession. He prays for people whom he loves as members of one household.
He begs that the Father “may grant you to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith” (vv. 16-17). The Greek expression is “tòn éso ánthropon … the inner man.”
Pauline psychology is difficult, and we should not get too far out over our skis. Paul supplies some orientation in Romans 7: “I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self…according to the inner man,” while he sees in his members another law at war with the law of his mind (Rom 7:22-23).
The conflict involves nous (mind or reason), sarx (flesh understood as fallen human nature) and pneuma (spirit). The inner man is more than an invisible compartment sealed away from the body. The great Pauline scholar Fernand Prat explains that, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, the inward man is strengthened and renewed. Left to himself, he is powerless against the flesh and becomes carnal (The Theology of Saint Paul). The intellectual and moral powers of man must be healed, elevated, inhabited, and renewed by the Spirit.
Paul therefore prays that the Ephesians, “rooted and grounded in love,” may comprehend “with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,” and know “the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge,” so that they may be filled “with all the fulness of God” (Eph 3:17-19). The Greek is “pleroma toû Theoû … the fullness of God.”
The language of dimensions invites us to imagine someone approaching the mystery with a tape measure and calculator.
We can measure a sphere’s radius and circumference. We can calculate its surface according to, as you no doubt know, a=4πr2 and its volume according to the only too familiar v=¾πr3. All of this, though ordinary fare, is true and fascinating, yet it only scratches the surface and turns up the volume only a little.
Natural reason can attain real truth about God and His works. However, the supernatural mystery of Christ’s love still “surpasses knowledge.” The Spirit strengthens the inner man so that he can enter more deeply into the content of revelation.
Consider the Cross. With our tape measure we can map out its breadth, length, height, and depth. Yet there is a part that remains beneath the earth, hidden from sight, holding upright the instrument of salvation. When we think we have figured out the mystery, we have reached another impossible threshold.
The sacred liturgy is precisely an encounter with this transforming Mystery. From our side, worship renders to God His due and fulfills the virtue of religion. From God’s side, He reveals Himself, descends like the glory cloud, passes before the cleft in the rock, and conforms us to Christ. At least that’s how it ought to be. Is that how liturgy is where you are? Is it time for a change?
Full, conscious, and actual participation begins in the inner man strengthened by the Spirit. At Mass we may kneel silently with little outward activity. The inner man can then be intensely active: receptive, adoring, offering, and being changed. The natural logos and nous are elevated by the pneuma, enabling us to receive something of the pleroma toû Theoû.
The Secret asks that we be cleansed to receive the fruit of the Sacrifice and the Postcommunion asks for renewal. Blessed Ildefonso Schuster explains:
The forbidden fruit wounded soul and body. The Eucharist pledges eternal salvation to the soul and resurrection to the body. Christ enters the whole person. The Sacred Heart heals the failing heart. The swollen soul is emptied of pride and filled with the pleroma toû Theoû.
Garrigou-Lagrange gives the proud soul strong medicine:
To examine our consciences is to shine light into the corners where pride hides like vermin behind garage clutter or rotting food at the back of the refrigerator. Pride reeks, but the devil sprays the air-fresheners of distraction, comparison, indignation, and self-justification. Confession brings the cleansing that pride fiercely resists.
At the Sabbath table, Christ healed the dropsical man and deflated the puffed-up guests. Paul bowed his knees in prison and prayed that Christ might dwell in our hearts through faith. The Collect surrounds every good work with prevenient and subsequent grace. The Eucharist renews the image disfigured in Adam.
Pride swells the heart. Humility heals it. Charity enlarges it according to another measure altogether, that is, to the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of Christ.
The Pharisees watched Christ in order to accuse Him. The humble soul watches Christ in order to imitate Him: “Learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart” (Matt 11:29). Mary, whom Dante calls “umile e alta più che creatura .. humble and exalted beyond any creature” (Par 33.2), sings the great canticle against pride: “He has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree” (Luke 1:52).
St. Michael’s Quis ut Deus?, “Who is like God?”, answers the ancient diabolical rebellion of Non serviam, “I will not serve.”
Our hearts are healed by learning the rhythm of the Sacred and Immaculate Hearts rather than marching to the drumbeat of our own importance.
Is there a vice which God hates more than pride?
Take the lower place. Draw your neighbor from the pit. Receive grace going before and following after. Bow the knees of the inner man. Approach the Holy Sacrifice with faith, humility, and wonder.
Then, when the Host of the eternal banquet chooses, we shall hear the words no creature may rightly speak to himself:
“Amice, ascende superius… Friend, come up higher.”