Pride is Not Good
We all know that the secular world celebrates “pride” month every June. And every year I think about how pride is really not a good thing to have. It goes against everything Catholics believe about God and about ourselves. St. John Baptist De La Salle said, “pride causes us to neglect totally the care of our soul.”
In the future, I would like to muse on Church teachings on topics such as same-sex marriage and transgenderism. But for today, I’m musing on the harmfulness of pride and the importance of recognizing it in our lives.
Celebrating pride makes oneself a god because it involves one to define good and evil. But good and evil are defined by God who has created and ordered the world. So, there is no winning if we follow the way of the world instead of the way of God; there is no freedom.
St. John Paul II is right when he said, "freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought." There is freedom in accepting God's will and designs because we simply cannot change them according to our wants.
In his book The Art of Living, Dr. Edward Sri has a helpful section on pride. He writes, “pride is the greatest sin. While other sins are about human weakness, selfishness, or giving in to our misguided passions, pride is a more direct offense against God and his reign over our lives,” (Sri, 184).
The first sin committed by Adam and Eve was pride. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church explains the first parents chose themselves over God: “He (mankind) chose himself over and against God, against the requirements of his creaturely status and therefore against his own good…He wanted to ‘be like God,’ but ‘without God, before God, and not in accordance with God,’” (398).
By eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve abused their free will and gave in to the desire for power. They wished to determine, for themselves, what was good and evil. This is pride; it rejects the truth of who God is and who we are as his creatures.
Natural order, which includes moral principles, was set in place by God. So, when we decide what we think is right or wrong, we “play God.” This includes a variety of sins: I don’t have to go to Sunday Mass, it’s okay for me to cohabitate, and the list goes on. We can be prone to rationalize our sinful actions.
Here is the truth: “there is pride every time we sin: every time we choose to do our own will and not submit to God’s will, we are falling into pride,” (Sri, 182).
Pride rejects justice. Justice is “the moral virtue that consists in the constant and firm will to give their due to God and neighbor,” (Catechism, 1807). Attending Mass on Sundays is right and just; God has asked us to, and we owe it to him. Christ suffered terribly for us, loves us, and desires communion with us; we owe it to him to attend Sunday Mass.
While pride rejects the truth of who God is and who we are as his creatures, humility accepts God as almighty. Humility is an acceptance of who we are as fallen human beings.
The rainbow, as you may know, is a sign of God’s covenant with us made after the flood in Genesis. It is a covenant he has willed for every human person. It is a symbol that reminds us of God's omnipotence. It symbolizes spiritual birth through the waters of baptism (the flood), gives us hope, and points us toward the divine promises God has made to us.
“For all that is in the world – the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life – is not from the Father but is from the world.” (1 John 2:16).