Pride in external goods. (From I Want To See God, Fr. Eugene-Marie, OCD)
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"The external goods in which one takes pride are all those that secure honor and consideration for their possessor, and therefore exterior advantages and qualities; such as beauty, fortune, fame/name, rank, honors. These goods simply constitute a facade - brilliant perhaps - which, as we know, conceals our interior poverty very effectually. And yet we like to dwell on them in secret admiration of our own supposed excellence, and we display them to win honor and praises. But the world is not deceived; after satisfying what convention requires, it reserves to itself the right to pass interiorly the severe judgement of justice.
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This pride, the most foolish but also the least dangerous because exterior, is ordinarily the first to give way before the light of humility (humiliations). In her Life, St. Teresa of Jesus writes::
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Thus the soul "is weary of the time when it paid heed to niceties concerning its own honor, and of the mistaken belief which it had that what the world calls honor is really so. It now knows it to be a sheer lie and a lie in which we are all living. It realizes that genuine honor is not deceptive, but true, that it values what has worth and despises what has none; for what passes away, and is not pleasing to God, is worth nothing and less than nothing. It laughs at itself and at the time it set any store by money and coveted it. [Life, xx; Peers]
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I see some people whose actions are very holy and do such wonderful things that everyone is astonished at them! God bless me then! Why are such souls still on earth? How is it they have not reached the summit of perfection? What is the reason for this? What can it be that is impeding one who is doing so much good for God? Why? Simply because of his punctiliousness about his reputation. And the worst of it is that this sort of person will not realize he is guilty of such a thing, the reason being that sometimes the devil tells him that punctiliousness is incumbent upon him. [...] Such a concern is a thing which harms the soul whenever it occurs, but in the life of prayer, it is pestilential. [Life, xxxi; Peers]
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A day will come when the soul will enjoy a quiet laugh when it sees 'men of prayer making a fuss about niceties concerning their honor'; for it will know very well 'that if they subordinated the authority due to their positions to the love of God they would do more good in a day than they are likely to do as it is in ten years.'" - I Want To See God, Humility; Marie-Eugene, O.C.D.
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Icon: St. John of Egypt - March 27 is his traditional feast day.
