Yay!
You have completed the first step of Jesus’s three step process. That may qualify as your launch into your very own Dark Night where the soul seeks its lover now feeling safe to sneak out under cover of darkness, or if not it still could happen!
- Deny your “self” (the “false self” based on the pride you found – the strong man having been bound, you may now plunder his house that occupies us)
- Take up your cross (note He didn’t say His cross, but your own. He carried His own.
)
- Follow Him. To me that means listen to His words, as His Father said “listen to Him” rather than as much to the stories around him.
And if you want to see some awesome ways that “pride” can show itself in very tricky ways, you’ll see how we all are subject to it like other posters said.
Check out the Chapters 1 and 2 at least (all I’ve read
) of a work by St. John of the Cross, promoted to Doctor of the Church in 1926, it is almost amusing the way that pride is very cunning even when it wants to disguise as “humility”.
I hope you like it.
Dark Night of the Soul
Excerpt, beginning of chapter 2:
CHAPTER 2
- Some of the imperfections of pride possessed by beginners.
2.1. These beginners feel so fervent and diligent in their spiritual
exercises and undertakings that a certain kind of secret pride is generated
in them that begets a complacency with themselves and their
accomplishments, even though holy works do of their very nature cause
humility. Then they develop a somewhat vain – at times very vain – desire
to speak of spiritual things in others’ presence, and sometimes even to
instruct rather than be instructed; in their hearts they condemn others who
do not seem to have the kind of devotion they would like them to have, and
sometimes they give expression to this criticism like the pharisee who
despised the publican while he boasted and praised God for the good deeds
he himself accomplished [Lk. 18:11-12].1
2.2. The devil, desiring the growth of pride and presumption in these
beginners, often increases their fervor and readiness to perform such
works, and other ones, too. For he is quite aware that all these works and
virtues are not only worthless for them, but even become vices. Some of
these persons become so evil-minded that they do not want anyone except
themselves to appear holy; and so by both word and deed they condemn and
detract others whenever the occasion arises, seeing the little splinter in
their brother’s eye and failing to consider the wooden beam in their own
eye [Mt. 7:3]; they strain at the other’s gnat and swallow their own camel
[Mt. 23:24].
2.3. And when at times their spiritual directors, their confessors, or
their superiors disapprove their spirit and method of procedure, they feel
that these directors do not understand, or perhaps that this failure to
approve derives from a lack of holiness, since they want these directors to
regard their conduct with esteem and praise. So they quickly search for
some other spiritual advisor more to their liking, someone who will
congratulate them and be impressed by their deeds; and they flee, as they
would death, those who attempt to place them on the safe road by forbidding
these things – and sometimes they even become hostile toward such
spiritual directors. Frequently, in their presumption, they make many
resolutions but accomplish very little. Sometimes they want others to
recognize their spirit and devotion, and as a result occasionally contrive
to make some manifestations of it, such as movements, sighs, and other
ceremonies; sometimes, with the assistance of the devil, they experience
raptures, more often in public than in private, and they are quite pleased,
and often eager, for others to take notice of these.
