Catholic during the Great Apostasy

1 Humble submission to God – this is the meaning and destiny of man; it is the only thing necessary.

The first and greatest difficulty that man encounters in achieving the goal of life is the tendency in human nature to disorderly independence, to pride. It is hard for man not to value himself more than he actually deserves; attached to himself, he becomes a rebel against God.

As with animal nature it is given to man to be attracted to sensuality, so in the well-being of the spirit lies the danger of pride.

In Eschilos we read: “From the flower of hard pride ripens as fruit sin, whose harvest is tears and suffering”.

There are monkeys who always and everywhere seek out the highest places. When they find themselves in the forest, they climb the highest tree tops; when caught, they find themselves in a room, they pull up chairs on the table in order to look at everything from a possible height with delight. To these animals the delicious man is similar, who in all conditions of life is constantly thinking about it, in order to gain the highest possible position for himself. It is the duty of everyone to keep this disorderly temptation in check.

Pride is the most abundant source of errors that are severe in their consequences.

St Augustine maintains that there are people who, as a result of pride, speak like madmen (homines superbe delirantes). The fact is that the leaders of non-Christian philosophy accused each other of being mad and worse things still.

Where there is pride, there can be no happiness. Happy is he who accepts every gift with joy. A man full of pride is constantly in a bad mood, because the best good of his own seems to him to be too small, and he regards other people’s property as a thing vilely taken from him.

The highest places in heaven are for the humblest, and the deepest in hell for the proudest.

2 The opposite of pride is the virtue of humility.

Humility is submission to God, or rather the relinquishment of oneself to God. Humility is a virtue of the will; by it we consider ourselves to be what we actually are, so that we do not wish to be something greater and to claim to be something greater than what corresponds to the truth, and we voluntarily submit to the order established by God.

What are you, man, that you think you do not need to care about God’s will!

What are you, so asks one profound connoisseur of men, compared to other men? Show all the great and mighty things you have, or think you have; magnify them as much as you can: you have the qualities of the flesh, do not others have them? You have riches, do not others have these? You have learning and virtue, do others have that too.

What are you in the world? How far are you known? In even your most intimate social circles there may be those who in various respects surpass and overshadow you.

What is your intelligence, your deeds and your abilities compared to the intelligence, deeds and abilities of all mankind? You die, and after a short time only a tiny handful of people know anything about the place where your corpse has crumbled into dust. You disappear, like that field flower, like a cloud in the sky, like the ripple of a torrent. Look for a drop of water in the sea; look for a grain of sand on the wide seashore!

And what are all earthly greatness put together compared to the world of spirit? How insignificant is our earth with all its population in comparison with millions of worlds! And what are all the generations of men and all the choirs of angels compared to the infinite God?

3 And you, child of man, barely visible from the dust of the earth, would you have the audacity to raise your head against God?

Where do you come from? Where are you going?
Go to your cradle, go to your grave. What is your holiness or virtue? You don’t seem to believe in it yourself. And what you have, how tarnished by privations and errors! What is your strength of will? Every difficulty frightens you. What is your reason? You have been tormented for a long time and what do you know?

Delete from your creativity, if you have one, and from your way of speaking everything you have taken from others, and what is left? What is your earthly life? Behold, a handicap, a misery, a filth, a living mud covered by snow. You sit as a wretch on a pile of manure and dream that you are a king. By nature you are nothing; and as for virtues, you are less than nothing because of your sins.

There is no more effective and powerful means of strengthening a person in salutary humility than the thought of sins committed.

Christian thinkers are of the opinion that God does not prevent people from sinning, so that the feeling of guilt may be an incentive to humility and shame.

Wouldn’t you be ashamed to the depths if these noble people knew all your thoughts, desires, words and affairs?

Should you not be ashamed, then, when you think that the all-knowing God pervades all your misery.

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Father Tilmann Pesch SI, A Christian philosophy of life. VOL. I. 2nd ed. Cracow 1930, pp. 293-296.