The Faults That Spring from Pride

The mind, then, that is hardened by such feelings and begins with this miserable coldness is sure to go from bad to worse every day and to end its life in a more hideous way. While it delights in its former desires and is overcome, as the apostle says, by ungodly greed (for he says of it, “and greed, which is idolatry, or the worship of idols,” and again, “The love of money,” he says, “is the root of all evils”), it can never let the true and unfeigned humility of Christ into the heart. That cannot happen while the man boasts of his high birth, or is puffed up by his position in the world, which he has left in body but not in mind, or is proud of the wealth he keeps to his own destruction. Because of this he is no longer content to bear the yoke of the monastery or to be taught by any of the elders. Not only does he object to keeping any rule of submission or obedience; he will not even listen to teaching about perfection. [a]

Such a dislike of spiritual talk grows up in his heart that if such a conversation happens to arise, he cannot keep his eyes fixed on one spot. His gaze wanders blankly here and there, and his eyes shift this way and that, as is the habit of such men. Instead of a healthy cough, he spits from a dry throat. He coughs on purpose when there is no need. He drums with his fingers, twiddles them, and scribbles like a man writing. All his limbs fidget, so that while the spiritual conversation goes on you would think he was sitting on thorns, and very sharp ones, or in the middle of a mass of worms. And if the conversation turns, in all simplicity, to something for the good of the hearers, he thinks it has been brought up especially for him. All the while the spiritual life is being examined, he is taken up with his own suspicious thoughts. He is not watching for something to take home for his own good, but is anxiously looking for the reason why anything is said, or quietly turning over in his mind how he can raise objections to it. So he cannot take in any of the things so admirably brought forward, or gain any good from them.

The result is that the spiritual conference is not merely useless to him but actually harmful, and becomes for him an occasion of greater sin. For while his conscience pricks him and he imagines that everything is aimed at him, he hardens himself more stubbornly in the obstinacy of his heart and is stung more sharply by his anger. After that his voice is loud, his talk harsh, his answers bitter and noisy, his walk lordly and erratic. His tongue is too ready. He pushes himself forward in conversation and is no friend to silence, except when he is nursing in his heart some bitterness against a brother; and then his silence shows not a pierced heart or humility, but pride and anger. So one can hardly say which is more objectionable in him: that unrestrained and boisterous merriment, or this dreadful and deadly gravity. For in the first we see untimely chattering, light and frivolous laughter, and unrestrained and undisciplined mirth. In the second we see a silence full of anger and deadly, which comes simply from the desire to prolong as long as possible the spiteful feelings nursed in silence against some brother, and not from the wish to gain from it the virtues of humility and patience.

And as the man in the grip of passion readily makes everyone else miserable and is ashamed to apologize to the brother he has wronged, so when the brother offers to apologize to him, he rejects it with scorn. Not only is he not touched or softened by his brother’s approach; he is made even angrier because his brother has gone ahead of him in humility. And that wholesome humbling of oneself and apology, which usually puts an end to the devil’s temptation, becomes for him the occasion of a worse outbreak.