John Climacus, Rev. Fighting pride. How to get rid of pride

Modern man is constantly being told that he must be the first, the best, that it is shameful to be a loser who has achieved nothing in life. Pride in life attracts people to walk over the corpses of their neighbors, push everyone aside with their elbows, and strive for a superior position. This passion is especially cultivated in the world today. It is she who, spurring on the achievement of pleasures, will lead to an increase in lawlessness, because of which love will become scarce among people living on earth.

Signs of spiritual pride

The first sign of pride is to measure others by your own standards.

Why do we show dissatisfaction with others? Why are we annoyed with them, angry? There are several reasons for this. Firstly, we measure another person by our standards. When we are healthy, when our heart beats evenly, our blood pressure is normal, when both eyes see and both knees bend, we cannot understand another person who feels bad. We have an even character, but that person is choleric, or vice versa - he is calmer and more pragmatic than us.

The “I” that reigns in our heart forces us to look at other people through the prism of our own physical, mental and spiritual properties, and we unwittingly consider ourselves a stencil, a model for others. This starts a storm in my soul: I do it, but he doesn’t do it; I don’t get tired, but he complains that he is tired; I sleep five hours, but, you know, eight hours is not enough for him; I work tirelessly, and he shirks and goes to bed early. This is precisely what is characteristic of a proud person; it is the proud one who says: “Why do I do this and he doesn’t? Why do I comply with this, but he does not comply? Why can I do it, but he can’t?”

But the Lord created all people different. Each of us has our own life, our own path in life, our own life situations. A well-fed person does not understand a hungry person, a healthy person will never understand a sick person. A person who has not gone through troubles and temptations will not understand the grieving person. A happy father will not understand an orphan who has lost his child. A newlywed will not understand a divorced person. A person whose parents are alive will not understand someone who has just buried his mother. You can theorize, but there is the practice of life. We often do not have life experience, and when we begin to gain it, we remember those whom we condemned, with whom we were strict, and we begin to understand that at that moment we were like dummies. We didn't understand what this man was feeling. They tried to edify him, but he had no time for comments. His hands gave up from grief, his soul grieved, he did not need moral teachings and pompous words. All he needed at that moment was sympathy, compassion and consolation, but we did not understand this. And when the Lord takes us through the same thing, we begin to feel what the other person felt.

This is one of the signs of pride - we measure other people by our standards. When we do this, it shows that we are not generous. And all you need is to try not to judge the other person, not to get irritated, but to accept him as he is and try to let him into your heart. But it is difficult.

The second sign of pride is “self-”

To combat pride, I can give you a wonderful prayer that helps you lower your own “I” to the bottom of your heart, drown it in sympathy for another. This is the prayer: “ Lord, teach me not to understand me, but so that I understand others».

You complain: “My wife doesn’t understand me, my children don’t understand me, they don’t appreciate me at work, no one hears me.” Do you hear? Here it is, our “I”, “me”, “me” - here it comes out of the soul.

This prefix “self-” is the second sign of pride: self-indulgence, self-pity, self-love, self-will.

The action of pride in a person begins with this prefix. I am proud and value myself: “Others rarely go to church and pray weakly, not like me, a respectable Christian. I am full of self-pity, and therefore I do not get up to pray - I am tired. I don’t want to help my neighbor, because I myself am poor, unhappy, I feel so sorry for myself. Everything hurts, I recently got sick, why should I go to church? I need to lie down and recover, even if others, fools, trudge through the cold to the temple and bow there, since they do not understand what serious illnesses they will subsequently suffer, and do not feel sorry for themselves.” Here it is, the second hypostasis of human pride.

The third sign of pride is self-will

In addition to “self-” there is also “own-”: self-will, self-indulgence. A proud person manifests himself by not obeying his superiors, not fulfilling the blessing of his spiritual father, and by being arbitrary and self-willed. This is especially true for new Christians. “I will do as I see fit, the way I want. As I see, and not as I am taught, not as the instructions at work prescribe, not as the boss says. Maybe he is a fool and doesn’t understand anything. And I'm smart, I understand. I’ve been working here for a long time, and he was sent from another city...”

The proud one does not want to learn from the Church, from the confessor, from elders, from experienced and experienced people: “I will break through the wall with my head and reinvent the wheel, but I will not go to someone who has been married for twenty years, who has been working for this production, who has been singing in the choir for a long time. I will do it myself, according to my own mind, according to books!” This is the sign of a proud person. He does not consult, he does not ask for help, he does not try to understand what, why and where is happening.

Our self-will is the source of our troubles

When I receive people in church who come with their troubles and sorrows, I ask everyone: “What is your question?” And they often answer me: “I want... I want this... I want this... I think like this... Why does everyone do this if I want something else?..”.

“I want” sounds from the lips of many who come to the temple with their broken lives; it can be heard at every step. This is precisely the problem, the reason that led to sad consequences. A person does not ask the question: “Lord, what do you want from me? Where should I direct my path? How can I build my life according to Your will? Instead, he says, “I want to have a good job. I want to have a good family. I want to have obedient children. I want to find a direction in life that is beneficial for me. I want…"

I say in response to this “I want”: “Until you break yourself, until you drive out the evil “yashka” from your soul, who puts your own “I” above all else, there will be no place for God in your soul, your life will not get better, you won't succeed. You will not see any light in the darkness in which you remain with your sorrows and worries, because your problems in life are generated by your own “yashka”, your self-will, pride, your not seeking the will of God, but doing your own will.”

A consumer attitude towards God, the Church and people is the fourth sign of pride

People come to church and ask indignantly: “Why don’t they like me here?” You often hear this from beginners. They are still infected with all the passions, they do not yet understand anything about church life, they have just crossed the church threshold. The first question they ask is: “We visited the Protestants and saw love there. But here, in the Orthodox Church, they don’t like us. Why is that?" They demand: “Give us love, give us joy, give us that lightness and liveliness like the Protestants!” Everything is very simple there: “Raise your hands!” Picked it up - and that’s it, you’re saved. Here's some lentil soup, here's two kilograms of pasta. Hallelujah! You are saved, go, see you tomorrow, brother, see you tomorrow, sister, the Kingdom of Heaven awaits you, God loves you!

But with us everything is completely different. You need to pray in an Orthodox church. Fasting, standing for long services, concentrating on prayer, forcing and limiting oneself, there are no wide smiles, slapping on the shoulders and deliberate hugs. With us everything is strict, decorous and restrained. And people demand: “Where is the love? I came to church for love, but where is it here? She's not here! Give me love!

This is another sign of pride - a consumer attitude towards God, the church and the people around us. "Let me! Why don't you give it to me? Where is Love?" - when we hear these words, it means that a person is infected with pride and has not yet been reborn.

And the ancient prayer says: “Lord, teach me not to love me, but to love others. Not to be consoled, but I consoled. Not so that they would understand me, but I learned to understand others.” Do you see the difference? Don’t give it to “me”, but so that I can learn to give! To the extent that a person succeeds in this, to the extent that he confirms his steps on this path, we can speak of his spiritual rebirth.

But we “yak” all the time, and everyone: “Give it to me, give it to me!” Here I am, here I am!”

Resentment is the fifth sign of pride

Resentment refers simultaneously to irritable-wrathful passion and to the passion of pride itself. What is resentment? This is sadness and bitterness because it hurts my heart.

Resentment can be causal or causeless. Causeless resentment refers to the passion of despondency. Causal resentment is when another person hurts me, and the question arises: “Why are they doing this to me? Why are they doing this to me?” As soon as this “why” addressed to God and the “why” addressed to people emerge from the soul, it is immediately clear that the person is infected with pride.

What will a spiritual person say if he is offended? “Lord, I accept you for my sins. Remember me, Lord, in Your kingdom. Thank You, Lord, for not scolding me and not offending me even more. Perhaps, Lord, I once offended someone and this offense came back to me. Or maybe the nest of anger and resentment is not empty in me, which means I can potentially offend someone, and You inoculate me, let people hurt me so that I myself don’t hurt another person.” For such a Christian, the word “why” does not arise; he understands: since it hurt, it means it’s necessary. St. Isaac the Syrian tells us: “If you, a Christian, have not learned to overcome insults, have not learned to see the healing hand of the Lord behind every insult, then you have not understood that the Lord heals your soul.” And if you do not accept the healing hand of the Lord, you are offended and do not overcome your grievances, then the path of spiritual growth is closed for you. You do not grow as a Christian, you remain the same sinner you were, with a stricken, purulent, unhealed soul. Because behind any offense is the hand of the Lord, which heals the ulcers of our soul and shows where we were wrong.

In the grievances caused to us, we can comprehend the Providence of God and draw appropriate conclusions.

The sixth sign of pride is truth-seeking

Here, at the lectern, during confession I often hear complaints and insults. The question always arises: why? Why did they treat me this way? Don't I go to church? Didn’t I feed my children, didn’t I water them, didn’t I raise them alone, without my husband? Why do they treat me like this, insult me? I worked in production for twenty years. Why am I being kicked out, fired, while those who have connections and acquaintances remain with their job and salary? Why are they treating me so unfairly? Here it is, a manifestation of pride - truth-seeking. This is another sign of a proud person.

Such people think that they are doing a good deed and are looking for the truth. But they are looking for the wrong truth. They want earthly, human truth, but do not seek God’s truth. But there is no truth on earth, my dears! How long can I repeat this to you? The truth is only with God. “I have counsel and truth; I am the understanding, I have the power” (Prov. 8:14), says the Lord. “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord. But as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts higher than your thoughts” (Is. 55: 8-9).

The Lord tells us that this world lies in evil, that this world is a kingdom of lies and evil. So is it really not clear who rules this world?

God creates His truth, by acting according to which Christians can be saved. And by engaging in false truth-seeking - I emphasize: false truth-seeking - and the search for false human justice, they become Pharisees, Sadducees. They go to church, pray, outwardly fulfill God’s commandments, but their inner man is so deeply affected, so removed from God and so unChristian, that it becomes scary. The replacement of a Christian by a callous man of earthly truth and justice is a terrible phenomenon for the Church; it is an ulcer, a rust that eats away at it.

What would a believer say? “Lord, let Your holy will be done for everything. Thank You for everything. For I firmly believe that everything in this life works for good to those who love You and believe in You, and trust You, and put their trust in You. You say that you care about my life, and I entrust my whole life and soul into Your hands.” This is the mood of a believer. So he goes to God and overcomes the proud movements of the soul.

The seventh sign of pride is self-justification

What is self-justification? This is one of the types of manifestation of pride: a person wants to defend his own rightness; or wants to be thought better than he is; or at least thought exactly what he really was. When a person is offended or told something he doesn’t like, his pride is hurt. And at this very moment self-justification quietly comes into force. It affects everyone, from children to people of the highest rank.

Let's take a closer look at the essence of self-justification. Here a husband turns to his wife and makes a fair remark to her that her children are not fed or her apartment is not cleaned. What does he hear in response? “Look at yourself! What are you like, do you bring home a lot of money? And anyway, where do you put your shoes when you come home, and what do you turn your socks or pants into?” This is where the husband's denunciation ends. And then he will say something, and again he will receive a similar response from his wife. Or the mother tries to persuade the child: “Why did you behave so badly at school, offend the children, quarrel with them? And look at your diary, it’s full of comments.” - “No, I behaved no worse than usual, and yesterday you yourself swore and quarreled. Why should I listen to you? A boss says to a subordinate: “Why did you do such and such in bad faith?” - “And you yourself forgot to tell me about this yesterday.” What arises in the boss’s soul? Anger or hostility towards a subordinate. He tries to prove something to him, but instead receives a thousand words in response.

Wherever we look, self-justification brings great evil. One person tries to either blame or reason with another, but what does he hear in response? A thousand words, and all in defiance of the speaker: “Why are you bothering me? Look at yourself, what you are.” What does this generate? Hatred, anger, hostility. Self-justification is a bridge that leads further to the development of anger, and even further - to quarrels, battles and hatred between people. Self-justification feeds on pride and leads to hell.

The eighth sign of pride is murmuring

Let us now talk about what turns the face of God away from man, erects an insurmountable barrier between God and man, causes the anger and irritation of God - about grumbling. Murmuring is a form of blasphemy against God, ingratitude to Him for all His great benefits. This is spiritual and mental blindness, aversion from the Providence of God, a descent from the divine path, the road to the underworld. This is the grief that darkens the soul; it is impenetrable darkness that makes a person’s path deadly for both the temporary life and the future life.

Murmuring is a manifestation of human pride, the proud resistance of a creature to its Creator. All the days of our lives we should remember that no matter how much we want otherwise, no matter how hard we try, we will always remain creatures of God. The Holy Scripture says: “Woe to him who disputes with his Creator, O shard of earth’s shards! Will the clay say to the potter, “What are you doing?” and your work [shall say of you], ‘He has no hands?’” (Isa. 45:9). The pot did not sculpt itself, but was sculpted by a master. And it is not the pot, but the potter who determines which vessel has great, which small, and which has insignificant use. He himself breaks his creation and restores it again. What can we oppose to our Creator? Nothing. He determined for each his own path in life and his own cross in life. He gave each one a special blessing that we must carry throughout our lives, and perhaps be saved, or perhaps perish.

From the Holy Scriptures we see what terrible consequences grumbling has always led to. Through the lips of prophets and righteous people - from the Old Testament and our time - the Lord exposes our wrongfulness and our ingratitude to Him. For what? Then, so that we do not anger Him, so that we turn to Him and become truly holy Israel, the holy people of God. But this often doesn't happen. Because everything is not enough for us; or we perceive everything that is sent as evil; or we want something else, we think in our own way, forgetting that the Creator exists above us.

You should remember, my dears, that for every murmuring word, for every ingratitude to the Lord, for every blasphemy against Him you will give an answer. And it will be with you as it was with the people of Israel. Today the Lord blesses you and puts into your hands the opportunity to live differently and inherit life, but tomorrow He will take it away for your grumbling. And then all the days of your life you will find neither peace nor joy, only sorrows and illnesses will haunt you. Today you were close to finding peace of mind, peace in your family and with those around you, but tomorrow, for murmuring, the Lord will harden those around you, and you will begin to experience terrible disasters. And perhaps, as was the case with the people of Israel, only children, seeing your sorrowful example, will understand how afraid they should be of murmuring against their Creator.

How to deal with pride

To fight pride, you need to tackle all the passions it generates at once.

Why is it so important to simultaneously fight both the diseases of dominant passion and the disease of pride? I'll give you a simple everyday example. Which of you has been involved in gardening knows: when a beet or turnip grows and you want to make borscht, then you pull it by the young tops, and they break off, remain in your hand, and the turnip or beets are in the ground. To pull it out, wise gardeners take hold of all the leaves of the tops at once, closer to the root, and pull - only then does the root crop sitting in the ground fully stretch out. Likewise, in order to draw out the passion of pride, one must immediately take on all the passions it manifests: irritation, pride, despondency, fighting them and at the same time asking the Lord to give him humility and meekness. That's when pride is uprooted.

The fight against pride begins with small, external

A proud person is also recognizable outwardly - he loves to laugh, talks a lot, fusses and shows himself, all the time trying to reveal himself. Therefore, throughout the year, I bless you to work on this internal problem: look for the last place, do not show yourself off, do not stick out, do not justify yourself, do not boast, do not get ahead, do not exalt yourself.

This is the fight with pride. You need to start small. If a person wants to start fighting his pride, then he must find the worst place for himself and sit there; when everyone is talking, be silent; when everyone is bragging, keep your mouth shut and speak only when asked.

To overcome pride, you need to learn obedience to the Church and obedience to your confessor, cutting off your will.

I tried to convey to you how terrible pride is, how our own “ego” uses us, how we want to live for our own benefit. But in order to become a disciple of Christ and acquire the mind, heart and soul of Christ, you need to forget yourself and. How difficult it is! All the strings of the soul protest. Why should I think about someone, console someone, help someone? I don't have to. I have my own life, my own problems. Why do I need someone else, why do I need all these strangers?

But these people are not strangers. These are the ones whom the Lord has placed around you today. So that you can save your soul, remake yourself, remove your “I” so far that it does not stick out, and another person comes first for you. Without this it is impossible to become a disciple of Christ, for the Lord says: “If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me” (Matthew 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23 ). “He who saves his life will lose it; but he who loses his life for My sake will save it” (Matthew 10:39; Mark 8:35; Luke 9:24). These are the words we hear in the Gospel. What do they mean? That a person is called upon, for the sake of love for God and neighbor, to lack sleep, to be malnourished, to waste time, nerves, and strength. But modern man does not want to do this, because he sees only himself and stews in his own juice.

Do you want to be disciples of Christ? Deny yourself and learn to see God in the neighbor who is near you. Turn over everything that lives in your soul and put it in proper order, as the Lord blesses it. And the passion of pride will begin to heal in your souls.

Repentance is pharisaical and false

It seems that you go to church, and you have reason to think that everything is in order, that you have finally begun to live like a Christian. But with such an attitude, the heart begins to become covered with a film of spiritual fat, becomes impenetrable, lazy, and soft. But this is not pleasing to the Lord, and the Lord will disturb your soul all the time. We seem to calm down - and we don’t fully see our sins. Constantly looking for sins in yourself and bringing them to confession is the path to delusion. It’s a different matter when the Lord, by His grace, opens our eyes to our sinfulness. I want you to understand the difference between what the Lord says in relation to the Pharisees: “blind guides, straining out a mosquito and swallowing a camel” (Matthew 23:24), and the situation when we pray to God, repent to Him, try to cleanse our soul - and our eyes open to all the torment of our inner man, we see how imperfect and weak we are; and this prompts us to deep repentance and leads us to confession. When a person seeks out sins in himself, this often happens according to Pharisaism; It’s awkward for him to go to confession and not say anything to the priest. He thinks: “What should I say about myself? It seems like he’s not exactly a saint, but I can’t find any sins.” But it’s another thing when a person’s heart is bursting with understanding of what is happening in him. These are two qualitatively different states. The first is Pharisaic hypocrisy; in the second we remain unfalsely.

Let us remember the parable of the publican and the Pharisee. The Pharisee stood humbly in the temple, but at the same time said: “God! I thank You that I am not like other people, robbers, offenders, adulterers, or like this publican” (Luke 18:11). This is the path of elevating oneself through the humiliation of others. The publican repeated: “God! Be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13). This is the path of self-abasement.

We ask you to open the doors of our heart of stone

The second path leads to opening the doors of the heart, and the first slams them. The difference between these two paths is often visible in confession. Some begin to repent and at the same time look for those to blame for their sins; whoever provokes them: the husband, the front door neighbors, the wardrobe maids, the authorities, the president, the head of the district, the priest - all together. When everyone around is pushing you to commit a sin, the person himself seems to have nothing to do with it: yes, he sinned - but he could not help but sin because he was hurt. He thinks: “How could I not sin here? I’ll share the guilt with everyone, and they are sinners, and I am a sinner.” This is a direct path to delusion - the path of covering up one’s sins, running away from them, unwillingness to see one’s weakness and honestly say: “Lord, I’m lazy, I’m selfish, I love myself, I’m hard-hearted. It’s not anyone’s fault that I don’t get up for prayer, that I want to break my fast or do something else, it’s not others who are to blame, I myself am to blame for this.”

During Great Lent, you and I stand on our knees at the all-night vigil and hear: “Open the doors of repentance to us.” Where do these doors lead, where are they? We are talking about the doors of your own heart. We ask God to give us the opportunity to enter into the depths of our hearts and truly know ourselves. We ask: “Open the doors of repentance, O Life-Giver Christ,” so that the key to our heart of stone may finally be found, so that we can see what is inside, feel it, repent, and be cleansed. These are the doors we are talking about and what we ask the Lord for.

Forgive me, bless me, pray for me

The Holy Fathers left us many great pieces of advice, and one of them concerns how to stop irritation, which, perhaps rightly, or perhaps unjustly, flares up in relation to another person. According to patristic advice, in such a situation a person should remember three words worthy of a Christian. These three words: " Forgive, bless and pray for me" They spiritually influence the one who proves something to you.

Of course, you most likely won’t say these words at work. Most of our work is secular, and many of our employees are non-believers. If you say in front of them what the holy fathers advise, they will simply consider you crazy. But in a believing family, or in church obedience, or in relation to an Orthodox Christian - a friend or sister - these three words are enough to stop the mouth of any anger, to immediately, in the beginning, extinguish all hostility and all irritation.

Think about these three simple words. “Forgive, bless and pray for me.” “Sorry” means a person asks for forgiveness. This is the first indicator of humility. He doesn’t declare: I’m right or I’m wrong, he doesn’t talk a lot about himself, he doesn’t start reasoning and he doesn’t promise - now we’ll figure out which of us is right. He says: "I'm sorry." The subtext of this “sorry” is that I don’t know whether I’m right or wrong, but it doesn’t matter if I upset you, like my brother. Then the person says: “Bless.” This means that he calls on the grace of God for help. The one who will really manage, who will pacify a brother or sister, who will pacify the situation, who will extinguish all the machinations of the devil in order for man to quarrel with man. And when he adds: “Pray for me,” this is the third sign of humility. A person asks for prayers for himself, so that the grace of God will help him to actually do works of righteousness.

In this way, a person truly grows rich in God, and not in himself. He does not feed his granary of pride, does not fill the granary of his vanity with the obscene grain of pride, but grows rich in God, exhausts himself, bows before his neighbor, humbles himself before his neighbor, asks for his holy prayers and calls on the grace of God for help.

Suggest to your neighbor no more than twice

How, however, should a person who is trying to reason with another convey the truth to him? It would be good if he came across a believer who truly humbled himself and acted on the advice. A person who behaves this way brings peace into communication between people, between Christians. But if this is not the case, if in response to admonition there are thousands of excuses?

You and I, Orthodox Christians, are like spiritual lumberjacks. We have such a spiritual saw, and we saw with it our neighbor until the juice flows out of him. This is typical for our environment. How can we stop in time so that our neighbor does not squeal, cry or groan because of our good admonitions, and at the same time our pride does not develop? There is also corresponding patristic advice for this. It says the following: inspire your neighbor no more than twice. The Holy Fathers verified this. If a person repeats something more than twice, then hostility will appear in his soul, then irritation, then anger.

How to be? What to do in this situation - your neighbor does not listen? It is necessary to convey to a person’s consciousness a very important life circumstance - to explain something to a child, a family member, a co-worker - but it doesn’t work. The Holy Fathers say: say it twice and stop. Otherwise, irritation will come into your soul, anger will come into your soul, and you will no longer admonish your neighbor in a Christian way, but with passion, with hostility. And instead of admonition, a quarrel may result.

Who benefits from a quarrel? To the murderous devil. God doesn't need a quarrel. Better a bad peace than a good quarrel. A family that survives is better than a family that is broken. Friends who maintain relationships are better than friends who look askance at each other. A community of people where there is peace, albeit a bad peace, a weak one, but peace, is better than enmity, quarrel and hostility towards each other. This needs to be understood. And take care of what the Lord gives us.

Therefore, here are two pieces of patristic advice for you, very instructive for both sides - for the admonisher and for the admonished. Let's repeat them again.

The first advice: do not admonish more than twice, do not try to force the will of another with your will. Say it twice, and then leave everything to the will of God. Wait for the Lord to enlighten a person, when He opens his heart and soul so that your words fall on good soil. If you continue to rape a person, you will get anger, irritation, a quarrel, and, moreover, you will cultivate pride in your own soul.

And the second piece of advice is for those who are admonished: under no circumstances try to make excuses. Who needs your excuses? Nobody needs them. With them you will only push your neighbor away from you, you will cause despondency in him, quarrel with him, move away from him, and you will lose a friend. Therefore, there is no need, no need to make excuses. Whether you are right or wrong is of no concern to anyone. God sees everything. God sees your heart, your soul. Say three simple words of humility: “Forgive, bless and pray for me.”

Act according to God's truth, not man's

Human justice is very much related to human flesh. She forgets about mercy towards others and is in no way connected with the Gospel of God. This justice is a law that a person writes himself for his own convenience, or for the convenience of his life, or for the convenience of self-justification, or for his other conveniences.

Elder Paisios gives a simple example. You have ten plums, and you decided to divide them between you and your brother. You say that there are two of you, and you divide them into five, exactly equally. This is human justice. There is nothing shameful in it, this is an ordinary act of an ordinary person. Everyone remained to their own, neither you nor your brother were offended. What will be the injustice? If you gave less to your neighbor and took more for yourself. And somehow he justified himself: “I’m older and more experienced,” or “this morning I said three prayers, and you two, and I was entitled to six plums, and you four - you were too lazy.” But in fact, gluttony was secretly thriving in the heart. I just wanted to eat six plums, even if I deprived my neighbor. Such is human injustice. But there is also the justice of God, when a person saw that his neighbor was hungry, that he was in need, that he wanted plums - and for the sake of his neighbor he gave in. He says: “Friend, eat eight plums, I don’t like them, and in general they make my stomach swell; I don’t need these plums, I’ve eaten enough, eat these eight for Christ’s sake.” This is divine justice.

Do you see how the three justices differ from each other? So it is in the life of God: God’s justice is always associated with some kind of limitation, self-abasement and sacrifice for the sake of one’s neighbor, when a person sacrifices either time, or something dear to him, or what is sent to him.

We see this in the Gospel parable. The father has two sons. And the father first acts according to human justice. How does he divide his estate between his eldest son and his youngest? In half. The youngest son wanted half an estate - please get half an estate. The father does not ask his son: “What will you do with him, what will you turn him into?”, and in human justice he gives him half his estate. We do not know the true motives of the youngest son - whether it was greed or foresight - but we see a truly human act: he took away half of his father’s estate for his own benefit.

We saw something similar in the pages of the Old Testament, when Lot and Abraham almost quarreled with each other over pastures for their animals. And what did the holy righteous Abraham do? “We, relatives, will not quarrel over who got the best and who got the worst,” and the elder gives way to the younger. He invites Lot to choose pastures that he likes. And what does Lot choose? Sodom and Gomorrah. We know what the green pastures of Sodom and Gomorrah turned out to be for him. He barely made it out of there, lost his wife there, all his belongings, all the animals and slaves. Abraham acts in righteousness, in love, but Lot acts in a human way. In one lives the desire for human justice, and in the other – for God’s justice. And Lot then disentangles this human justice and remains poor, in rags, mocked and ridiculed. And Abraham flourished and continues to flourish.

We see the same thing on the pages of the Gospel narrative. The younger son, having coveted what did not belong to him, and having acted un-Godly, having taken away half the estate from his father and older brother, went to another country. He lived prodigally, squandered everything he had, and as a result, his lot turned out to be to eat with his owner’s pigs. And then his conscience woke up in him, he turns to God, he goes back to his father. The father sees the resurrected son, the converted son, returned to the bosom of the Father, and acts according to the truth of God, he accepts the son and does not spare anything for him. With a generous hand he slaughters a well-fed calf, with a generous hand he prepares all kinds of dishes, gathers guests for a feast and rejoices with his son at his return.

What does the eldest son, who has remained with his father all these years, do? According to human truth. With bitterness, he tells his father the same thing that we often reproach relatives and friends - that they treat us differently than others. “Why do you treat me differently than you treat my older sister, my brother? Why did you give your brother the opportunity to live with his family in a separate apartment, while I have to hang around and experience all sorts of difficulties?” Such reproaches towards parents and other loved ones also arise in Christian circles. We ask “why?”, we torment the souls of our loved ones. But the answer is simple: because such is the truth of God. You think like a human being, but your parents, relatives and friends, often admonished by God, think like God. They see who needs it more at this moment, who suffers more. You don't have a family, but your older brother does. You have one person in your family, and your sister has three. You complain, you want and seek justice, and you will receive it. But then you will bitterly repent, as Lot repented. You will then shed bitter tears for your earthly human justice. Having finally found her, you won’t get anything good from her.

But when you give place to the grace of God, humble yourself and act in God’s way, give eight plums to your neighbor, then the grace of God will completely cover you, fill in everything that you lack, and the Lord Himself will help you on all your paths.

If we seek human justice, and not the truth and justice of God; if we do not humble ourselves before God and our neighbor; Let us not act as the holy fathers advise us - to oppress ourselves for the sake of Christ, to limit ourselves for the sake of our neighbor, to do what is best for our neighbor and not for us - then there will be no Christianity, no spiritual growth in us.

Of course, it is very difficult for a person to live according to the truth of God. You need to break yourself to the roots every time. We love ourselves very much, we warm ourselves very much. It is not for nothing that the Lord, knowing this human essence, said: “As you want them to do to you, do so to others.” Our own shirt is closer to the body, and it is difficult for us to tear off a piece of it and bandage the wounds of our neighbor with it. To accomplish this, you need to overcome yourself with God’s help and prayer. It is very difficult and very painful, but necessary. If this does not happen, then there will be no finding of the prodigal son, there will be no change of soul. We will be honest, good, decent, respected, diligent, correct people, but people of this age - and not sons and daughters of God.

The Lord Himself delivers us from pride

Boomerang Law

We all wonder why misfortune befalls us and our children. When we analyze our life, it becomes obvious that not everything is smooth and even. If it arrives somewhere, then it will definitely leave somewhere else; if something happens “with a plus,” then something “minus” will definitely give something. It seems that everything is fine in the family, there is prosperity, but there is no happiness: the husband does not love his wife, or the family sees their father very rarely, or the wife is not in good health, and the family suffers, visiting their mother in hospitals. And others, on the contrary, are healthy, but have no money - so they are constantly thinking about what to buy to eat and what to wear. And so it is with everyone: it doesn’t happen that everything is there at once - one thing is there, but the other is not.

Why does this happen, what is God’s Providence here, what is the meaning of our, sometimes temporary, misadventures? The boomerang law applies here. We allow some kind of weakness, indulge ourselves, our passions, follow the love of money, allow some adventurous notes to sound in our souls - and “suddenly”, after a year or a year and a half, the boomerang we launched returns to us, the fact that we created, begins to haunt us. What is the meaning of this boomerang? I would say that the Lord gives us spiritual vaccinations. For what? If a person is not vaccinated against pride, then it can destroy him. If a person is not vaccinated today against the temptation that may arise for him tomorrow, this temptation will completely cover him and the person will perish.

What does it mean to act humbly?

A true Christian will not make trouble or make noise. What will he do? In God’s way, that is, he will humble himself, cross himself: “Lord, Thy will be done.” And he will repeat the words of the Lord: “If it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; however, not as I want, but as You want” (Matthew 26:39). Here it is, Christian submission to the will of God, here it is, humility before God, humility before God’s providence and one’s fate in the eyes of God.

And when a person humbles himself in this way and surrenders everything to God, seeks everything from God, prays: “In the Lord who weighs destinies, direct my path,” then it is really not he himself, not his human pride, not his understanding that begins to help him in this life , but the Lord Himself.

Too often we do not act as the Lord commanded us. We fume, swear, insist on our rights. For example, parents come home and say: “You are not our daughter (or you are not our son), get out of here, from this square, from this apartment, it’s cramped for us to live with you!” So, get married or get married - and away from your father’s house. Or something else: “You have a good job, we are not obligated to help you and your children, don’t contact us, and don’t let us hear your calls anymore.” And so say relatives, fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles! Is there anything surprising here? No. For it is said in the Holy Scripture: “Every man is a lie” (Ps. 116:2).

We must trust in the Lord, and in Him alone see joy, consolation and support for our long-suffering life. We must ask Him to help us at every time and at every hour, not to rely “on princes, on the sons of men, in them there is salvation” (Ps. 146:3).

It is important, dear brothers and sisters, that we subordinate our will to the will of God. Very often, in the crucible of life's trials, our pride and vanity are highlighted. We see this situation that is developing, we see the offensive injustice, and then our own “I” comes forward: “I think so! I want it to be like this!” But we do not say preemptive words: “Let God’s will be done for everything; not as I want, but as the Lord wants it.” And it is necessary to say them, because with His unexplored and inscrutable paths He leads us through life, leads us through injustices and insults, and then it turns out that this was for our great benefit, that it was for us to save our souls, and that there is no other way could have turned out, but only the way the Lord arranged it. To drink without complaint the cup that the Lord drank and that He gives us is great Christian humility, a Christian feat that we need to learn.

Murmur blocks God's mercy

Murmuring pushes the Kingdom of God away from us, brings upon us the wrath of God and His rebuke. Let's look at the pages of Holy Scripture, at the pages of history, at today. What happens to those who go against God and do not accept what He sends? Where are they? They are no more, and their ashes were scattered by the wind, and their very race was uprooted.

Let us remember the suffering of the people of Israel. The Lord sent many plagues before the people of Israel could leave Egypt. During the first procession through the desert, it was extremely difficult for the people, and people grumbled, remembering the old time when they had plenty of meat and lived calmly, although they were slaves. And when the Lord had already led them to the promised land, when it was visible - just a stone's throw away - another murmur blocked God's mercy, and the people were forced to wander in the desert for another forty years. The Lord, angry, did not allow almost anyone to enter the promised land. The entire generation of those who grumbled died out. They were buried in the desert. Only their children inherited the opportunity to enter there, into the land where, as the Lord said, milk and honey flow. Only children who grew up in obedience and loyalty to their Creator and Creator inherited the promise of the Lord.

Human life is a procession through the desert. The tabernacle that the Israelites carried with them is a type of the altar of the Lord; the ministers who bear this tabernacle are the priests; and you, naturally, are Israel, which must go through a difficult path of testing.

The Lord did not spare His chosen people and, because of their grumbling, sent them to wander in the desert for another forty years. So the Lord can delay for each of you to see the Kingdom of Heaven, to find peace of mind, peace in the soul, the Kingdom of God within yourself - to delay for thirty years, forty, for seventy - for how long. Remember that every murmuring word, every blasphemy of the day of our life, of what happens to us, angers the Creator and leads to Him changing the line of our life. He makes it so that we come to our senses, come to our senses and come to the right conclusions.

Slaves of sin, we came out of the land of Egypt. Will we be healed?

You need to firmly understand that, perhaps, many of you standing here in the temple will not see the Kingdom of God and will not find what you are now looking for: healing from illnesses, easing your sorrows, all this can continue until death. There is no need to despair - God was so favorable. Perhaps your children or grandchildren will inherit what you are striving for now. Why? Because you and I came “out of Egypt,” we were slaves—slaves of sin—and with this we came to the Church. And many of us, as we were, remain, in our inner essence, slaves. And they serve the Lord not as sons or daughters, but out of fear of punishment, of future torment in Gehenna.

Is this good or bad? On the one hand, it's good. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. There will be no restraining fear and we will all perish. On the other hand, this is bad. For God needs love not from under the stick, not the obedience of a slave. He needs the love of his son or daughter. And in order to reach the state of a son or daughter, obedient to the Father in everything and always, all the days of his life, one has to go through a considerable life path.

Therefore, there is no need to be mistaken and there is no need to grumble. The children will inherit - thank God, the grandchildren will inherit - thank God. The Lord is trying to lead us out of our spiritual slavery and give us a different life. To give the opportunity to fulfill God’s commandments not in a ritual sense; feel the breath of the Holy Spirit in the temple; with a free heart, pray to Him as the Living God, serve Him and see Him, the Living One, always, in every place: here, in church, and at home, and at work, and feel Him in your heart.

In order to be faithful to the Living God, to serve the Holy Trinity, to worship God in spirit and truth and to truly be a daughter or son of God, we must thank God for everything that He sends to us all the days of our lives. To glorify His name, no matter how hard it may be, to endure everything that is sent. Did the Lord deprive the Israelites of water as they walked through the desert? Cheated. Have you been deprived of food? Cheated. Wasn't it hot and difficult for them to walk? Was. So it is in our lives. Yes, it’s hard, it hurts – but there is no other way. Who said that with easy efforts you can enter the Kingdom of Heaven? On the contrary, the Lord says: “The Kingdom of Heaven is taken by need, and neediness takes it away.” Those in need - that is, those who are forced, endure, and in great patience, in great humility and submission to God go where God's blessing extends them.

Therefore, let us submit to what is, and accept with joy and gratitude the blessing of God that descends on us. Even the unpleasant, sick, suffering, it is a blessing of God, given specifically to us, and there is no other way for a person to find peace and tranquility, and for the Holy Spirit to change his heart and soul for the better.

Vaccination against pride

When we begin to shift our sins onto someone else, the Lord sends us misadventures—spiritual inoculations. Just when we think we have everything in order, the Lord vaccinates us. Suddenly we quarreled with someone, quarreled. Or suddenly something we did turns out to be shameful, evil, and we cannot understand how we could have done such a thing. We only raised our heads, but the Lord immediately lowered them down to the ground: “You thought that you had completed your salvation here. Behold, I am showing you what you are. Don’t lift your head high, lower it down, and just go. Walk humbly, don’t look around you, don’t look around, don’t look at the sins of others.”

We very often need this vaccination against pride. I have seen many prosperous families in which parents and children gradually fell into a state of neglect of God and the Church. “What do you ask God for? We have everything. The children are healthy, they themselves are healthy, there is well-being and prosperity in the family. There is enough money for the children to study; the younger ones go to high school, the older ones receive higher education. What more do we need? Why should we go to church? - they reason. These people, who are in a state of consumerism towards the Church, have not yet entered the ranks of those serving God; they can fall off at any moment. The Lord sees this, the Lord is merciful, the Lord is pained by these people and inoculates them against pride, sends a shock or a misfortune.

He shakes us up - and there is so much money that it’s barely enough to pay the rent, but we also need to feed ourselves and our children. And we understand that we cannot do without the help of the Lord. And we go and ask the Lord for help: “Lord, help us, we can’t do anything.” Some new law has been issued - and we understand that tomorrow we may be evicted from our apartment, and it is unknown where we will be - in a communal apartment, with a roof, without a roof, on the street, and whether we will even have a piece of bread. That’s when we go to the Lord: “Lord, help me, without You I cannot do anything.”

The Lord gives us such vaccinations so that you and I have resistance against the proud state, which to one degree or another is inherent in every person. The Lord hides from us the extent of our infection with pride. It's different for everyone. Some have severe severity. And some have very mild symptoms. Maybe it doesn’t manifest itself at all, nestling somewhere deep in the heart. But the Lord sees that even this little pride can destroy us forever, forever close the doors of the Kingdom of Heaven for us. And the Lord vaccinates us - gives us misadventures.

We hit our foreheads and bowed our heads: “Lord, how did I not notice this, how could I do this, what did I think of myself, what did I think?” For such thoughts to be born, you need to hit your forehead against a wall or have it slammed on your head from above. And before that they don’t exist.

My dears, we have a lot of events in our lives. Sometimes we skid, we lose our sense of proportion, our brakes don’t work. In other cases, a person is carried away, and he cannot stop - he wants to, but cannot. Then the Lord stops him. Especially if he is a believer. The Lord is not pleased with this state of man; he sees that he can continue to grow in evil. And today He sends him a little admonition, so that tomorrow, in a year, having found himself in exactly the same situation, a person will not do greater evil, will not break wood, will not commit such sins because of which he would be ashamed to even come to confession, threshold church cross. The Lord is giving you a little vaccination today so that tomorrow a big, huge, serious misfortune does not happen to you, so that you understand God’s providence, understand that the Lord has mercy on us, that He loves us and that all the evil that happens to us is actually great good for us. The Lord stops us like foolish children. It gives us the opportunity to reflect on whether we are doing the right thing.

If the Lord had not done this to us, I assure you, we would all have perished. For no one is safe from satanic pride, which is inherent in the people of this age. Therefore, my dears, please accept with gratitude everything that the Lord sends to you, try to learn lessons from the Lord’s inoculations. Draw the right conclusions from everything that happens. Then you will be delivered from many troubles and misadventures and with a grateful heart you will pass unharmed through all the devil’s snares. Amen.

To fight pride, you need to tackle all the passions it generates at once.

The fight against pride begins with small, external

To overcome pride, you need to learn obedience to the Church and obedience to your confessor, cutting off your will.

I tried to convey to you how terrible pride is, how our own “ego” uses us, how we want to live for our own benefit. But in order to become a disciple of Christ and acquire the mind, heart and soul of Christ, you need to forget yourself and see your neighbor. How difficult it is! All the strings of the soul protest. Why should I think about someone, console someone, help someone? I don't have to. I have my own life, my own problems. Why do I need someone else, why do I need all these strangers?

It seems that you go to church, and you have reason to think that everything is in order, that you have finally begun to live like a Christian. But with such an attitude, the heart begins to become covered with a film of spiritual fat, becomes impenetrable, lazy, and soft. But this is not pleasing to the Lord, and the Lord will disturb your soul all the time. We seem to calm down - and we don’t fully see our sins. Constantly looking for sins in yourself and bringing them to confession is the path to delusion. It’s a different matter when the Lord, by His grace, opens our eyes to our sinfulness. I want you to understand the difference between what the Lord says in relation to the Pharisees: “blind guides, straining out a mosquito and swallowing a camel” (Matthew 23:24), and the situation when we pray to God, repent to Him, try to cleanse our soul - and our eyes open to all the torment of our inner man, we see how imperfect and weak we are; and this prompts us to deep repentance and leads us to confession. When a person seeks out sins in himself, this often happens according to the Pharisaism; It’s awkward for him to go to confession and not say anything to the priest. He thinks: “What should I say about myself? It seems like he’s not exactly a saint, but I can’t find any sins.” But it’s another thing when a person’s heart is bursting with understanding of what is happening in him. These are two qualitatively different states. The first is Pharisaic hypocrisy; in the second we remain unfalsely.

We ask you to open the doors of our heart of stone

The second path leads to opening the doors of the heart, and the first slams them. The difference between these two paths is often visible in confession. Some begin to repent and at the same time look for those to blame for their sins; whoever provokes them: the husband, the front door neighbors, the wardrobe maids, the authorities, the President, the head of the district, the priest - all together. When everyone around is pushing you to commit a sin, the person himself seems to have nothing to do with it: yes, he sinned - but he could not help but sin because he was hurt. He thinks: “How could I not sin here? I’ll share the guilt with everyone, and they are sinners, and I am a sinner.” This is a direct path to delusion - the path of covering up one’s sins, running away from them, unwillingness to see one’s weakness and honestly say: “Lord, I’m lazy, I’m selfish, I love myself, I’m hard-hearted. It’s not anyone’s fault that I don’t get up for prayer, that I want to break my fast or do something else, it’s not others who are to blame, I myself am to blame for this.”

The Holy Fathers left us many great pieces of advice, and one of them concerns how to stop irritation, which, perhaps rightly, or perhaps unjustly, flares up in relation to another person. According to patristic advice, in such a situation a person should remember three words worthy of a Christian. These three words: “Forgive, bless and pray for me.” They spiritually influence the one who proves something to you.

Think about these three simple words. “Forgive, bless and pray for me.” “Sorry” means a person asks for forgiveness. This is the first indicator of humility. He doesn’t declare: I’m right or I’m wrong, he doesn’t talk a lot about himself, he doesn’t start reasoning and he doesn’t promise - now we’ll figure out which of us is right. He says: "I'm sorry." The subtext of this “sorry” is that I don’t know whether I’m right or wrong, but I’m still sorry if I upset you as a fellow man. Then the person says: “Bless.” This means that he calls on the grace of God for help. The one who will really manage, who will pacify a brother or sister, who will pacify the situation, who will extinguish all the machinations of the devil in order for man to quarrel with man. And when he adds: “Pray for me,” this is the third sign of humility. A person asks for prayers for himself, so that the grace of God will help him to actually do works of righteousness.

Suggest to your neighbor no more than twice

Therefore, here are two pieces of patristic advice for you, very instructive for both sides - for the admonisher and for the admonished. Let's repeat them again.

We see the same thing on the pages of the Gospel narrative. The younger son, having coveted what did not belong to him, and having acted undivinely, having taken away polymeny from his father and older brother, went to another country. He lived prodigally, squandered everything he had, and as a result, his lot turned out to be to eat with his owner’s pigs. And then his conscience woke up in him, he turns to God, he goes back to his father. The father sees the resurrected son, the converted son, returned to the bosom of the Father, and acts according to the truth of God, he accepts the son and does not spare anything for him. With a generous hand he slaughters a well-fed calf, with a generous hand he prepares all kinds of dishes, gathers guests for a feast and rejoices with his son at his return.

You need to try to understand that your sins are the most serious and terrible, learn to pacify yourself in many ways (fasting helps with this), learn mercy (give alms, feel sorry for the disadvantaged, the sick, try to help them)..

harlem_
March 29, 2009
22:04

How to recognize Pride in yourself?

To the question: “How to recognize pride in yourself?” Jacob, Archbishop of Nizhny Novgorod, writes the following:

“To understand and feel it, notice how you will feel when those around you do something not, in your opinion, against your will. If what is born in you, first of all, is not the thought of meekly correcting a mistake made by others, but displeasure and anger, then know that you are proud, and deeply proud.

If even the slightest failure in your affairs saddens you and makes you bored and burdensome, so that the thought of God’s Providence participating in our affairs does not cheer you, then know that you are proud, and deeply proud. If you are hot to your own needs and cold to the needs of others, then know that you are proud, and deeply proud.

If at the sight of the troubles of others, even your enemies, you feel happy, and at the sight of the unexpected happiness of your neighbors you feel sad, then know that you are proud, and deeply proud.

If modest remarks about your shortcomings are offensive to you, and praise about your unprecedented merits is pleasant and delightful for you, then know that you are proud, and deeply proud.”

What else can you add to these signs to recognize pride in yourself? Unless ES-Li a person is attacked by fear, then this is also a sign of pride. Saint John Climacus writes about it this way: “A proud soul is a slave of fear; trusting in herself, she is afraid of the faint sound of creatures and the shadows themselves. The fearful often lose their minds, and rightly so. For the Lord righteously leaves the proud, so as to teach others not to be arrogant.”

And he also writes: “The image of extreme pride is that a person, for the sake of glory, hypocritically shows those virtues that are not in him.”

oxen197810
March 30, 2009
00:35

“When you are slandered and because of this you are embarrassed and sick at heart, it means that you have pride, and it is this that must be wounded and driven out of your heart by external dishonor. So, do not be irritated by ridicule and do not harbor hatred for those who hate and slander, but love them as your doctors, whom God sent you to enlighten you and teach you humility, and pray to God for them. - Bless you who curse (Matthew 5:44) - say: they do not slander me, but my passion , it is not me who is being beaten, but this snake, which nests in my heart and hurts it when slander is inflicted; I am consoled by the thought that, perhaps, good people will knock it out of there with their barbs, and then it will not hurt. Thank God for external dishonor: the one who has suffered dishonor here will not be subjected to it in that age. He has accepted his sins (Isa. 40:2). Give us your peace, for you have repaid everything to us (Isa. 26:12)."

Holy Righteous John of Kronstadt.

koppers3437
March 30, 2009
00:41

Save me, God.

connoisseur8756
March 30, 2009
02:27

87=gambia_9
March 30, 2009
03:39

Guys, thank you.

About the post. There is such a danger in it that you can be proud of holding it.

And also, about John of Kronstadt. He talked about a small degree of pride. But there is such pride in which no ridicule bites. This is more difficult to deal with.

Dima, thank you for describing the symptoms. Exactly the same!

oxen197810
March 30, 2009
23:36

Quote: And one more thing, about John of Kronstadt. He talked about a small degree of pride.

I think he was talking about the root of pride, the essence. It can really grow very strongly. What to do? Firstly, make a diagnosis, i.e. admit that there really is pride. Secondly, decide to fight it. Thirdly, go to confession and listen (and then do) what the priest advises to wound your pride. The main thing is, together with your confessor, to find a way to influence pride.

Fourthly, try to hurt your pride as much as possible. For example, a person loves grand entrances, beautiful clothes, flattery... So force yourself to go through the back door, in dirty jeans and secretly make fun of yourself when they flatter you (maybe ask a friend).

Engage in soulful reading. And not just read, delve into what is written. Pray and fast, ask God for deliverance from pride. They say pride is the mother of all sins.

87=gambia_9
March 31, 2009
01:04

Ekaterina, this stage with clothes and the back door has already been passed.

It does not work.

I tell myself “everyone is looking at me, probably laughing, my blouse is wrinkled, my head is shaved, I’m a laughing stock.” And the voice inside answers: “Fuck it, I’ll have to - I’ll go naked with feathers.”

Only with the words of John Climacus in message #4 do I reveal pride in myself: “A proud soul is a slave of fear; trusting in herself, she is afraid of the faint sound of creatures and the shadows themselves.” Apparently he was a great expert on pride, a most accurate symptom.

87=gambia_9
March 31, 2009
01:34

And I have one more question.

What is pride? Is it any different from pride?

connoisseur8756
March 31, 2009
04:33

As far as I understand, it goes something like this...

Pride is a state in which a person considers himself to be something independent, separate from God, and does not see his sinfulness and the need for correction and repentance. That is why it is the beginning of all other evils, because it is the very root of sin - separation from God.

Pride is a state in which a person considers himself to be something significant, he draws an image of himself and protects it.

Vanity is a state in which a person takes upon himself God’s glory, believing that he himself was able to do something, and seeks human praise. That is why Climacus says about her:

“Vanity is expressed with every virtue. When, for example, I keep a fast, I become vain, and when, hiding the fast from others, I allow food, I again become vain – with prudence. Having dressed in light clothes, I am overcome by curiosity, and, having changed into thin clothes, I am vain. Should I say? "If I become, I fall into the power of vanity. Whether I want to remain silent, I again surrender to it. Wherever you turn this thorn, it will all become its spokes upward."

In pride, a person defends his imaginary superiority, considers himself a closed, self-sufficient system, and in vanity he seeks praise (including from himself).

manicure199408
March 31, 2009
07:41

And always remember how you will answer to the Lord. Always have the Lord's Prayer ready. As soon as evil thoughts creep in, turn your thoughts to God. We may not be able to overcome some passions, but with God everything is possible. Ask for help, cry about your sins.

oxen197810
March 31, 2009
23:52

Ekaterina, as I already wrote: The main thing is, together with your confessor, to find a way to influence pride.

Those. To fight sin, only our desire and our strength are not enough. Now, if you “cast your sorrow on the Lord,” believe that His servant will give reasonable advice and HUMBLY (dismissing your wisdom) try to fulfill what is prescribed, then things will move forward.

This is general advice, so to speak, and only someone who knows your soul better can say in more detail.

^79hierarchal7
April 21, 2009
14:53

God bless you! The main thing is not to get proud when you manage to fight it))

koppers3437
April 21, 2009
14:58

Katyukha Sandler, respect!

oxen197810
April 21, 2009
15:30

“You need either some kind of misfortune or shock. Pray to God that this shock happens, that you encounter some unbearable trouble in the service, that there is a person who would greatly insult you and disgrace you in front of everyone, that out of shame you would not know where to hide, and would tear at once all the most sensitive strings of your pride. He will be your true brother and savior. Oh, how we sometimes need a public slap in the face, given in front of everyone! "

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol

bronchiolar2792
April 23, 2009
00:39

Usually fate itself slaps us on the head for pride, aka youthful maximalism. That’s how it’s treated....you then rethink everything and try to avoid it)

requisition198510
April 24, 2009
22:34

I know from myself that I cannot humble myself. You need to pray. Then there will be people who will shame you, and circumstances will not allow you to be proud.

87=gambia_9
April 28, 2009
14:49

Gentlemen and comrades, how can you determine whether pride has been defeated?

And one more question: does pride (in a good sense) exist?

motorcade3300
April 28, 2009
17:51

In my opinion, vanity and pride are the most ineradicable sins; they will creep in everywhere. Only by prayer...

A person is an emotional person who has developed his own rules of life. He has a huge energy reserve, through his feelings he expresses his own attitude towards others and the world, but what energy this person’s thoughts are endowed with, and what kind of emotions he shows when communicating with other people, depends solely on him and his desires. Let’s try to find out further what pride is and why it is a sin for people.

Pride - what is it?

Pride - a feeling of complete superiority own personality over others. It is an inadequate assessment of personal importance. The manifestation of pride very often leads to stupid mistakes, because of which others suffer. This sin manifests itself in arrogance, not showing respect for other people, their lives and experiences. People with a heightened sense of pride have an increased desire to brag about their achievements. They consider their success only to be their merit, not taking into account the help of others and higher powers in ordinary life situations, and do not recognize the help and support of others.

In Latin, “pride” is translated as “superbia.” It is a sin because every quality of a person is laid down by the Creator. And considering yourself the source of all your achievements in life and that everything around you is the result of personal labor is fundamentally wrong. Criticism of the actions and speech of other people, accusations of incompetence, rude ridicule - greatly amuses people with pride and brings them untold pleasure.

Very often a person does not even realize that he is submitting to pride and thinks this is some other quality of his character . But then it gets worse– as a result, a person is completely immersed in this sin. How can you discern it in yourself and other people in order to stop in time and protect yourself from sin? To do this, you need to familiarize yourself with and learn to distinguish the following signs of sin:

It is these signs that are often confused with pride itself., sometimes accept these signs as virtues, but only when they take first place in a person’s character and begin to guide him. After this, the person is unable to control himself, and this inevitably leads to harm to himself and the people around him.

There are different types of this sin. This may be an age-related type of pride. When adults treat little ones with disdain, because they are still very stupid and naive due to their age. Or, on the contrary, young people believe that older people do not understand anything about modern trends and their views on life are outdated.

There is pride of knowledge. When a person considers himself the smartest, and everyone around him is a fool.

Pride of beauty. This sin mainly affects women who consider themselves the most beautiful, and other women unworthy of compliments and love.

National pride. People believe that their nation is superior to others, and some nations do not even have the right to exist. An example of this sin can be considered the views of the Germans towards the Jewish nation during the Second World War? Why is this not an indicator of the full manifestation of pride and not the result of the complete mastery of sin by some Germans.

There are a sufficient number of types of pride, each type manifests itself in one or another area of human life and activity.

The results of this sin

Pride mainly acts as a source of bad thoughts and emotions, which negatively affect the state and behavior of people, in other words, prevent them from living a “correct” life, since an inflated sense of the importance of one’s “I” becomes the starting point of aggression towards other people. Other ideas about the world give rise to inside there is a flash of the following emotions: anger, resentment, hatred, contempt, envy and pity. They primarily lead to the absolute destruction of a person’s mental health, and, accordingly, his consciousness.

Pride and psychology

This sin often becomes a sign of incorrect upbringing. At an early age, parents often tell their child that he is better than others. However, the baby should receive praise and support, but only for a specific, real reason. False praise will create inflated self-esteem, which will invariably lead to pride. Such children, when they grow up, will not be able to realistically evaluate their own shortcomings. An example of this is that they do not know from childhood about criticism directed at them, and they will not be able to perceive it as adults.

As a rule, such sin brings discord in communication- after all, maintaining a friendly relationship with a proud person is a dubious pleasure. No one wants to feel humiliated from the very beginning, listen to long monologues about someone’s perfection and rightness, the lack of steps towards compromise will not lead to anything good. A proud person never recognizes the talents and abilities of another.

Pride in Orthodoxy

This is the main sin in Orthodoxy, since it is precisely this that is the source of other human vices: greed, anger. The salvation of a person's soul is based on the concept- The Lord is above all. Then you need to love your neighbor, sacrificing your interests and desires. But pride does not accept debt to another person; it does not have a feeling of pity. A virtue that eradicates pride and humility.

Current society imposes the opinion that a woman can easily do without a male representative. Pride in women does not recognize a family in which the man is in charge and his opinion is the main one. Women in such relationships do not recognize that their husband is right, constantly show their independence as proof, and try to subjugate the man to themselves. For such women, it is important to be a leader and a winner without deviating from your principles. It is not possible for such a woman to make sacrifices for her own family. Modern society paints similar pictures for us..

Total control, the habit of “dripping on the brain” and female irritability poison family life. Every quarrel ends only after the man admits his own wrong and the woman’s ego wins. A man's compulsion to praise a woman over every little thing lowers his self-esteem, which is why love dies. And the man wants to break off all relationships.

Get rid of this sin

When a person realizes what sin he carries within himself, and there is a desire to get rid of it, then the question immediately arises: how to get rid of it? This is not to say that this is very easy to do. After all, in order to get rid of a bad quality of character, you need to go through a long and difficult path, understand the sources of sin, and most importantly, make every effort to get rid of it, since the struggle will be with yourself.

Liberation from this sin - the path to knowledge of oneself and God, each subsequent step must be deliberate and confident. To do this you need to remember these rules:

love the world around you as it is;
learn to perceive any situation that occurs in life without offense and indignation, each time to show gratitude to God for what he has sent, because all circumstances are something new and useful;
be able to see the positive sides in any situation, although they are not always noticeable at first glance, since awareness often comes after some time.

We fight pride

There are such situations when a person himself can no longer do anything with himself to overcome pride. In such a situation, you should ask for help from your “senior comrades”, listen to their wise instructions and be able not to refuse them. This will help you take the true path, the path of resistance, and will also give you the opportunity to step further on the path of self-knowledge.

The most effective method in the fight against sin is service to family, society, the world and God. By giving oneself to others, a person changes because the environment becomes different - cleaner, brighter and more righteous. It’s not for nothing that the sages say: “Change yourself, everything around you will change.”

A person is an emotional person, with established life rules. He has a large reserve of energy, with the help of feelings he expresses his attitude to the world around him, but what potential a person’s thoughts are charged with and what emotions he emits in the process of communicating with people depends on him. Let’s try to formulate what pride is and why it is named for a person.

Pride - what is it?

Pride is a feeling of superiority of one’s own person over others. This is an inadequate assessment of personal worth. It often leads to making stupid mistakes that hurt others. Pride manifests itself in arrogant disrespect for other people and their lives and problems. People with a sense of pride brag about their life achievements. They define their own success by personal aspirations and efforts, not noticing God’s help in obvious life circumstances, and do not recognize the support of other people.

The Latin term for pride is “superbia.” Pride is a mortal sin for the reason that all qualities inherent in a person are from the Creator. Seeing yourself as the source of all achievements in life and believing that everything around you is the fruit of your own labors is completely wrong. Criticism of others and discussion of their inadequacy, ridicule of failures - strokes the pride of people with pride.

Signs of pride

The conversations of such people are based on “I” or “MY”. A manifestation of pride is the world in the eyes of the proud, which is divided into two unequal halves - “He” and everyone else. Moreover, “everyone else” in comparison with him is an empty place, unworthy of attention. If we remember “everyone else”, then only for comparison, in a light favorable to pride - stupid, ungrateful, wrong, weak, and so on.

Pride in psychology

Pride can be a sign of poor upbringing. In childhood, parents are able to inspire their child that he is the best. It is necessary to praise and support a child - but for specific, not fictitious reasons, and to reward with false praise - to form pride, a personality with high self-esteem. Such people do not know how to analyze their shortcomings. They did not hear criticism as children and are not able to perceive it in adulthood.

Pride often destroys relationships—it is unpleasant to communicate with someone who is proud. Initially, not many people like feeling an order of magnitude inferior, listening to arrogant monologues, and not wanting to make compromise decisions. Stricken by pride, he does not recognize the talents and abilities of another person. If such things are openly noticed in society or company, then the proud one will publicly refute them and deny them in every possible way.

What is pride in Orthodoxy?

In Orthodoxy, pride is considered the main sin; it becomes the source of other mental vices: vanity, greed, resentment. The foundation on which the salvation of the human soul is built is the Lord, above all. Then you need to love your neighbor, sometimes sacrificing your own interests. But spiritual pride does not recognize debts to others; the feeling of compassion is alien to it. The virtue that eradicates pride is humility. It manifests itself in patience, prudence, and obedience.

What is the difference between pride and arrogance?

Pride and arrogance have different meanings and manifest themselves in a person’s character according to different characteristics. Pride is a feeling of joy for specific, justified reasons. She does not minimize or demean other people's interests. Pride is a boundary; it denotes life values, reflects the inner world, and allows a person to sincerely rejoice at the achievements of other people. Pride makes a person a slave to his own principles:

forces you to build relationships based on the principle of inequality;
does not forgive mistakes;
has a grudge;
does not recognize human talents;
prone to self-affirmation on the work of others;
does not allow a person to learn from his own mistakes.

Causes of pride

Modern society forms the opinion that a woman can do without a man. Women's pride does not recognize a family union - marriage, in which the man is the head and his opinion should be the main one. A woman in such a relationship does not recognize the man’s rightness, clearly puts forward her independence as an argument, and seeks to subjugate his will. It is important for her to be a winner in a relationship with unshakable principles. It is unacceptable for a proud woman to sacrifice her own ambitions for the good of the family.

Excessive control, sawing and female irritation over trivial matters poison the lives of both. All scandals end only after the man admits his guilt and the female Ego wins. If a man is forced to praise the superiority of his wife for any trivial reason, he feels humiliated. His love fades away - passions rise, and he leaves the family.

What does pride lead to?

Pride is called an inferiority complex. An unhealthy sense of superiority over others does not allow a person to admit his shortcomings and encourages him to prove in every way that he is right - to lie, brag, invent and dissemble. The vain and proud have a developed sense of cruelty, anger, hatred, resentment, contempt, envy and despair - which is characteristic of people who are weak in spirit. The fruits of pride are those that give rise to aggressive behavior towards others.

John Climacus, Rev. Fighting pride. How to get rid of pride

Signs of spiritual pride

The first sign of pride is to measure others by your own standards.

The second sign of pride is “self-”

The third sign of pride is self-will

Our self-will is the source of our troubles

A consumer attitude towards God, the Church and people is the fourth sign of pride

Resentment is the fifth sign of pride

The sixth sign of pride is truth-seeking

The seventh sign of pride is self-justification

The eighth sign of pride is murmuring

How to deal with pride

To fight pride, you need to tackle all the passions it generates at once.

The fight against pride begins with small, external

Repentance is pharisaical and false

We ask you to open the doors of our heart of stone

Forgive me, bless me, pray for me

Suggest to your neighbor no more than twice

Act according to God's truth, not man's

The Lord Himself delivers us from pride

Boomerang Law

What does it mean to act humbly?

Murmur blocks God's mercy

Slaves of sin, we came out of the land of Egypt. Will we be healed?

Vaccination against pride

Pride - what is it?

The results of this sin

Pride and psychology

Pride in Orthodoxy

Get rid of this sin

We fight pride

Pride - what is it?

Signs of pride

Pride in psychology

What is pride in Orthodoxy?

What is the difference between pride and arrogance?

Causes of pride

What does pride lead to?

Read also:

Recent Entries

John Climacus, Rev. Fighting pride. How to get rid of pride

Signs of spiritual pride

The first sign of pride is to measure others by your own standards.

The second sign of pride is “self-”

The third sign of pride is self-will

Our self-will is the source of our troubles

A consumer attitude towards God, the Church and people is the fourth sign of pride

Resentment is the fifth sign of pride

The sixth sign of pride is truth-seeking

The seventh sign of pride is self-justification

The eighth sign of pride is murmuring

How to deal with pride

To fight pride, you need to tackle all the passions it generates at once.

The fight against pride begins with small, external

Repentance is pharisaical and false

We ask you to open the doors of our heart of stone

Forgive me, bless me, pray for me

Suggest to your neighbor no more than twice

Act according to God's truth, not man's

The Lord Himself delivers us from pride

Boomerang Law

What does it mean to act humbly?

Murmur blocks God's mercy

Slaves of sin, we came out of the land of Egypt. Will we be healed?

Vaccination against pride

Pride - what is it?

The results of this sin

Pride and psychology

Pride in Orthodoxy

Get rid of this sin

We fight pride

Pride - what is it?

Signs of pride

Pride in psychology

What is pride in Orthodoxy?

What is the difference between pride and arrogance?

Causes of pride

What does pride lead to?

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