God does great things in souls who are truly humble. We see this beautifully in the Blessed Virgin Mary. Think about who Mary is. She is the one woman in human history who was absolutely perfect. She was created “full of grace” (Lk 1:28) and remained faithful to those graces throughout her life. She never sinned. On top of all that, she was chosen among all women to be the mother of the long-awaited Messiah, the holy Son of God! Someone in her exalted position might be tempted to boast in her own greatness.

But that’s not what Mary does. In her prayer known as the Magnificat, she exemplifies the virtue of humility. Humility enables one to see the truth about oneself. Mary does this beautifully. She knows that there are great things happening in her life, but she recognizes that all those blessings do not come from her own effort, talent, or spiritual giftedness. They are all graces she received from God. Consider the first few lines of her prayer:

My soul magnifies the Lord,

and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden.

For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

(Lk 1:46—49)

Notice all that Mar}7 says about God, She does not seek to elevate herself. In the depths of her soul, she wants to magnify the Lord.—to make God great in her soul (see Lk 1:46), She delights not in herself—-in her good qualities, virtues, or holiness. Rather, she rejoices in God (see Lk 1:47). She humbly realizes how dependent she is on God: God is her Savior (see Lk 1:47). She knows that she is lowly, just a handmaiden, a servant of the Lord (see Lk 1:48). She recognizes that God is the one who has done great things for her and that it’s his name, not hers, that is most holy (see Lk 1:49).

Mary sees the reality of her life clearly. She knows, in the depths of her soul, the truth of her own littleness and how much she needs God. And she lives from this truth day by day, moment by moment. As a result, God does amazing things in her. And God will do great things in us the more we learn to grow in the virtue of humility and rely more on him and less on ourselves. As I’ve written elsewhere,

Mary recognizes this truth of the human condition. She understands how small she really is. She knows that on her own she is nothing, and that she is completely dependent on the Lord. Mary thus exhibits Christ’s teaching that the humble will be exalted. Only when we are convinced, like Mary was, of how Iitde we can really do on our own and how utterly dependent we are on God can the Lord begin to act in magnificent ways in us and through us.

Experiencing Humility

True or false: you have many weaknesses and sins, and you need to rely on God for everything in your life. Many Christians would answer, “True.” But that doesn’t mean they have the virtue of humility. The truly humble person knows the truth about himself not just in the abstract or on a quiz. He knows it deeply from his personal experience. He knows, at the very core of his being, how small he really is and how much he needs to depend on God.

The humble person thus sees reality clearly. He lives with no illusions. He’s not trying to be something he is not. “While there may be greater souls who are smarter, more successful, and holier than he, the humble person is at peace accepting who he is and playing the role God has in store for him. The humble person accepts that he needs God’s help. Most of all, the humble person does not try to control everything and seek his own will in life. Instead, he surrenders his will to God’s plan. The humble person, therefore, is free—free to be himself, free from the restlessness that comes from never being content with who he is, and free from always straining to be someone he is not.

Pride is the vice that opposes humility most and is at the root of all sin. But don’t think of pride as a sin for only the arrogant and egotistical—those who so obviously view them-selves as a big deal. Pride is found in many ordinary ways: the husband who doesn’t listen to his wife and feels his way of looking at things is always right; the parent who believes his approach to raising children is best and looks down on others who don’t parent like he does; the relative who has difficulty ever admitting he is wrong; the friend who is competitive and constantly compares himself to other people, looking over his shoulder to make sure he is always in the lead; the coworker who always thinks his ideas are best and has difficulty getting input from others and compromising.

Christians also might suffer from a spiritual kind of pride when they don’t pray consistently every day. If they really understood how much they need God, they would run to him

more often in prayer. Instead, they pridefully choose to rely on themselves. Similarly, when Christians get frustrated over their many failures, they might be falling into spiritual pride. They’re not so sorrowful over having hurt their relationship with God; they’re more troubled by the fact that they are not as good as they thought. They wish they did not need God’s mercy and grace so much. They pridefully cannot accept their weak condition and are frustrated that they are not better than they are.

Most of all, 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.

The First Sin

The first sin was the sin of pride, and all subsequent sin follows the same pattern. Consider how the devil convinced Adam and Eve to doubt God’s goodness and enticed them to want to be-come like God himself. As the Catechism explains, they wanted to ‘“be like God’ but ‘without God’” (CCC 398). We see this in two ways. First and foremost, they wanted self-rule—they wanted to rule over themselves rather than follow God’s plan for their lives. The Bible says they wanted to become like God, “knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:5), which is a biblical expression for deciding for oneself what is good and evil. In other words, Adam and Eve did not want to accept God’s commandments and his loving plan for their lives; they instead wanted to rule over themselves and make up what is right and wrong on their own. Rather than accept God as God, they wanted to be gods themselves, declaring for themselves what is good and evil.

Secondly, they did not want to have to depend on God for their lives and happiness. They wanted to be self-sufficient. They did not want to rely on God for all their needs and for their fulfillment (see Gen 3:5—6). They wanted to be able to rely on themselves.

We often do the same thing. We want to be the ones in control. We cling to our own plans, dreams, and desires and are so afraid of truly letting God in and surrendering our lives to his will. Yes, we might acknowledge that we need God, but deep down, we wish we weren’t so dependent on him. We wish we could just do our own thing, and we wish we were smarter, stronger, wiser, more virtuous, and more self- sufficient than we really are. We wish we didn’t have as many faults and weaknesses as we do, and we wish we were holier and didn’t need to rely on his grace and mercy. All this has some aspect of pride. And these knots of pride in our hearts must be undone. Learning to give up control, give up self- rule, and accept who we are as God’s creatures—learning to accept the truth of how small and weak we really are and how much we really need to depend on God at every moment, for everything—is the lifelong process of learning how to see reality correctly and overcome the vice of pride.

With this background, we can see that the heart of the devil’s temptation wasn’t simply to get Adam and Eve to break a rule. He wanted to get Adam and Eve to break a relationship and reject the truth about who they were in relation to God— the truth that they were creatures of the Creator, beloved children of the heavenly Father, God’s crowning moment in creation, far superior to all other visible creatures but not God. Indeed, the devil convinced Adam and Eve to rebel against their Creator and thus fall into the same sin he embraced: pride. As Aquinas explains, both the devil and Adam wanted to be equal to God “in so far as each wished to rely on himself in contempt of the order of the Divine rule.”5

This is why Aquinas sees pride at the heart of all sin, for every sin involves a rejection of who we really are as creatures of the Creator, dependent on God and called to serve him and his plan for our lives. Every sin has a seed of that prideful self- rule in which we don’t want to follow what God says; we want to do it our way. Indeed, every sin has an echo of that prideful response that Lucifer originally gave to God: non serviam—“I will not serve.”

What Exactly Is Pride?

According to Aquinas, the sin of pride is an inordinate desire for one’s own excellence. It involves not accepting the truth of who we really are, as creatures dependent on God. The proud person aims to be higher than he really is. He wants to appear to have more excellence than he actually possesses. This desire can be so powerful that it needs to be moderated by temperance, which is why Aquinas treats this vice under this particular cardinal virtue. The proud person tends not to want to accept his dependence on God and to reject God’s rule over him. At root, pride is an unwillingness to subject oneself to God.

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. As Aquinas explains, “In other sins man turns away from God, either through ignorance or through weakness, or through desire for any other good whatever; whereas pride denotes aversion from God simply through being unwilling to be subject to God and His rule.”

According to Aquinas, pride exhibits itself in four main ways. First, we can see pride in ourselves in terms of the good we think we possess. When we overestimate our own excellence, when we think we are better than we really are, that is a form of pride. We ascribe to ourselves greater qualities than we actually possess. If we struggle with pride, we are likely to have many blind spots. We think we are smarter than we are, we think our ideas are better than they really are, and we get easily frustrated when others don’t see things as we do. We think we are more productive and valuable to the company than we really are. We think we are better spouses than we really are: when there’s conflict in our marriages, the main problem must, of course, be our spouses because we’re doing everything so well.

When we have an inflated view of ourselves, we are likely to fall into boasting. In conversation with others, the proud person tends to exaggerate his accomplishments and qualities. He is so delighted with himself that he can’t help but tell others how successful he is, even though he has misjudged his actual level of excellence: “I’ve got this awesome idea! Everyone’s going to love it!” (reality: everyone smiles and nods but thinks the idea is crazy). “My department is really thriving now under my leadership” (reality: people are not hitting their goals, and morale is down). “Everyone loved the presentation I gave” (reality: some people did, but most thought it was just OK). “So many people came to the event I organized!” (reality: only forty-seven out of an expected one hundred people attended). “It’s been great getting time with the kids” (reality: you spent one evening at home this week).

Second, even when we really do possess certain good qualities, we can still fall into pride in terms of what we perceive is the source of those good qualities. Do we think we have the excellence from ourselves—by our own talent or hard work? Or do we truly recognize that it comes from God and from the people God has placed in our lives, such as good friends, parents, and mentors? Proud people do not deeply recognize how much they are dependent on God for everything. They could learn from Our Lady. Mary humbly thanks God for the blessings bestowed on her in the Magnificat prayer when she says, “He who is mighty has done great things for me” (Lk 1:49). The proud person, however, just focuses on the “great things” in himself.

Third, pride can be found in us in terms of the manner in which we possess our good qualities. The proud person tends to be very competitive. He’s constantly measuring himself against others and desiring to be superior. The proud person does not simply want to be the best he can be; he wants to be the best. He desires to achieve certain goals and possess certain qualities more than others. This causes the proud man to look down on others, to see them as threats, or even to despise them. He also tends to put others down, noting certain people’s faults and weaknesses—-either in his own thoughts or in his conversations—due to his insecure need to be superior.

This pride, however, is different from vanity. The vain man might wish to appear superior to others; the proud man wishes to be superior. The humble and magnanimous person strives to be the best he can be for virtue’s sake alone. He is not seeking praise from others (vanity), and he is not unsettled when he is not as good as he hoped or when others are better (pride), The vain man is worried about appearances. The proud man, however, wishes to be uniquely excellent, better than everyone else in his circle. He cannot be at rest in being who God made him to be if that means he is not more excellent than others.

It’s no wonder that people who are proud are not enjoyable to work with and cause much division in their communities.

Litany of Humility

One practical way to overcome the vice of pride—and vanity too—is to pray and live the ideals expressed in the Litany of Humility. This prayer was written by Rafael Cardinal Merry del Val (1865—1930), the Vatican Secretary of State for Pope Saint Pius X.

What’s so powerful about this litany is that it doesn’t just pray for humility. It goes after the errant desires and fears that keep us from being humble. It goes after those desires that lie at the root of our pride and vanity: the desires to be praised, approved, and preferred. And it goes after the fear of being forgotten, unnoticed, or not chosen. We will never grow deeply in humility until we are free from these sinful desires that lead us to develop an inflated view of ourselves (pride) and to seek the praise of men (vanity). We need Jesus to heal these emotions, desires, and fears, which is why praying specifically for this healing is crucial if we want to grow in virtue.

O Jesus, meek and humble of heart,

Hear me.

From the desire of being esteemed,

Deliver me, O Jesus, (repeat after each line)

From the desire of being loved,

From the desire of being extolled,

From the desire of being honored,

From the desire of being praised,

From the desire of being preferred to others,

From the desire of being consulted,

From the desire of being approved,

From the fear of being humiliated,

From the fear of being despised,

From the fear of suffering rebukes,

From the fear of being calumniated,

From the fear of being forgotten,

From the fear of being ridiculed,

From the fear of being wronged,

From the fear of being suspected,

That others may be loved more than I,

Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it. (repeat after each line) That others may be esteemed more than I,

That, in the opinion of the world, others may increase and I may decrease,

That others may be chosen and I set aside,

That others may be praised and I unnoticed,

That others may be preferred to me in everything,

That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should.

Reflection Questions

• Pride is not simply being arrogant and egotistical. Saint Thomas Aquinas says it involves not accepting who we are as God’s creatures, not accepting our complete dependence on him, and not accepting his rule over our lives-—we want to be the one in control and do our own thing. Which part of pride do you struggle with most? Why?

• Read Luke 1:46—49. How does Mary model humility? What line of her prayer inspires you the most to grow in humility?

Read Philippians 2:5-11. How does Jesus model humility? How does his example challenge you to be more humble?

Which line from the Litany of Humility challenges you the most? Why? What are some practical ways you can live out the message of this prayer more?

From The Art of Living, by Edward Sri, Chapter 19
Photo by Miquel Parera on Unsplash