Twenty-second Sunday Ordinary Time Year C
Rev. Thomas Kuffel
Having pride in oneself is the essence of life. Pride promotes honor in oneself for having received divine charisms and sanctifying graces to accomplish great deeds. It creates self-respect. Through pride, we come to know ourselves and it is in knowing ourselves, we understand our true identity. We are beautifully and wonderfully made in the image of God. Knowing ourselves allows us to improve ourselves and come to knowledge not only personal but also supernatural. Knowledge, the gift of the Holy Spirit, opens the divine doors to behold our hearts beheld by God’s hand.
“The Triune God who ‘exists’ in himself as a transcendent reality of interpersonal gift, giving himself in the Holy Spirit as gift to man, transforms the human world from within, from inside hearts and minds” (Dominum et Vivificantem, 59).
Through self-examination, we delve into our hearts, that place of relationship and decision, coming to know who we are. Who we are creates the paradox of pride. The pride God gives us, humility versus the human pride, better known as arrogance, that we create.
Through divine pride we excel in healthy self-confidence, achieving and reaching higher spiritually, mentally, and physically. No limits exist since our infinite God creates us. His infinite power empowers us to explore the depths of creation as well as the heights of his heaven.
Divine pride excels exploring the universe. The sciences delve deeply into the mysteries of creation. From the smallest microcosm to the macro ecosystems, our minds wonder, discovering hidden mysteries that answer our deepest questions, especially questions concerning God. Such discoveries enhance our knowledge, creating pride in the power of our human potential.
The spiritual side of pride excels in the ways of the Lord giving Him glory and honor. Saints exemplify this pride. Saints are living witnesses of divine pride. They reveal not just our social and scientific potential, but also the spiritual and mystical. They interpret the Scriptures not just with science and theology, but with their very lives. They live love, translating God’s intimate presence dwelling within creation. Such powerful witness rightly places us under divine authority. Submissive to divine authority, true pride builds humility knowing that “All that we have done, you have accomplished” (Is 26:12).
God’s glory glorifies us because He honors his creation and wants to rebound his truth, beauty, and goodness to all of creation, especially us. Yet, our divine pride is broken. Through one deception, evil seduced us, breaking us from divine pride, changing it into sin. We declare ourselves omnipotent and rule over creation and the Creator. Through sinful pride instead of glorifying God, we glorify ourselves. Pride broken, we declare ourselves great without God. This is the paradox of pride. What once gave us greatness, God’s grace, now breaks us. No longer do we partake in God’s divine pride, rather we deny the divine and declare humanity as the source of our pride.
Self-glorification rewrites creation. God does not create, we self-create. Self-aggrandizement lords it over others imposing our self-importance. We, as todays parable declares, take “places of honor at the table” (Luke 14:8) rejecting the first principle of divine pride. “For every one who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Lk 14:11).
In broken pride, self-dominance rules. We lord it over others, making our presence felt. We cast heavy burdens upon others making them slaves of our ways, not God’s. Dominion becomes domination and domination humiliates others. Dominion, however, serves using the charisms and graces responsibly, serving not controlling. Domination contorts our charisms and uses them for self-aggrandizement. This hypocrisy distorts divine pride and makes us arrogant: to appear superior to what we truly are. We claim an excellence that we do not have.
Another form of broken pride is apathy, a weariness for excellence. It mimics divine pride, not aggrandizing ourselves, but humbling ourselves. In reality, apathy self-protects trying to please others, yielding not out of humility but fear. We avoid difficulties and succumb to mediocrity. Yet, apathy creates conflicts, sometimes bitter conflicts for we do not want to exert ourselves and restore divine pride. The opposite of apathy is submissiveness. We know our place and serve, taking responsibility that is not above nor below our ability.
Both forms of human pride, dominance and apathy, destroy our dignity. Like parasites they devour our self-image either by making us more important than we are, or making us less than we are. In either case, dominance and apathy cause corruption, either using others or allowing others to use us.
Dominion and submission oppose dominance and apathy that break divine pride. These virtues balance each other, and humility is born, restoring a healthy self-image. Humility recreates self-esteem, recognizing our strengths and weaknesses honestly. In our weakness, we accept the fact God has dominion. Poor, we depend upon Him. In our strengths, we cooperate with God’s grace and become co-redeemers. We actively allow God’s grace to work through us giving us virtues that go beyond our human abilities. Grace empowers us to challenge those who lust for domination, and those who cower becoming apathetic.
Through grace, divine transformation occurs. Divine pride flows through our lives once again because the power of the Holy Spirit infuses humility within our being which dispose us “to follow readily the promptings of God” (Summa Theologia I-II q.68, a. 2). Readily receptive, humility changes our arrogance into submission and our apathy into dominion. St. John Paul captures the power of humility restoring our broken pride with a meek and humble heart. “The Holy Spirit re-establishes in the human heart full harmony with God and, assuring man of victory over the Evil One, opens him to the boundless measure of divine love. Thus, the Spirit draws man from love of self to love of the Trinity, leading him into the experience of inner freedom and peace, and prompting him to make his own life a gift” (John Paul Letter to Priests for Holy Thursday 1998).