Thanksgiving is a season for gratitude. In that spirit, we offer our chapter on overcoming pride and developing true humility, so that we can better appreciate our spouses, our communities, and our lives.
The king of pride is Satan, and his children are those who show his characteristics.
John 8:44
It isn’t that I think so highly of myself. It’s just that I can’t seem to think about anything else.
Norman Mailer, Tropic of Capricorn
If love is to will the good of the other, then pride is its complete antithesis. Pride consists not so much always in thinking highly of yourself, but in thinking about others primarily in terms of how they relate to you. How can you have a marriage of self-giving love if you filter everything through yourself, if you evaluate everything according to how it benefits or harms you?
Pride is the sin that is present any time a person will sacrifice their spouse’s needs or their relationship for their own benefit. In the prideful marriage, one or both of the spouses understand the purpose of the marriage is for the other to meet their needs.
Self love does not always overtly express itself as selfishness. Often pride takes the form of unrealistic expectations--a rigid worldview that insists that if someone loves them, they should act according to a specific script, or that marriages should unfold according to inflexible, and often unstated rules.
“We encounter problems whenever we think that relationships or people ought to be perfect, or when we put ourselves at the center and expect things to turn out our way,” writes Pope Francis I. “Then everything makes us impatient, everything makes us react aggressively. Unless we cultivate patience, we will always find excuses for responding angrily.”
As with the other sins, pride is not really about how one feels inside—it is revealed in how one acts. And we can change our actions.
In Dante’s Purgatory, the souls of the proud are disciplined by carrying great weights upon their back. These heavy burdens crush them into the earth, humbling them by reminding them of the dust from which they came. Dante is keenly aware that the term humility derives from the Latin humilis literally "on the ground," derived from the word humus, meaning "earth." As a result of their burdens, they become more humble, less self-absorbed, and less likely to focus on themselves and take others for granted.
They become more grateful.
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