Great Confidence vs. Pride

Recently I had a profound realization of all the ways that I participate in pride in my life. I was reading a book about the capital sins and it was like the Lord turned on the light in a dark room that I had been sitting in for years. All of the ways that I was keeping my pride hidden was flooded with light and I was overcome with sorrow. The Holy Spirit led me to confession and from that point I have been discovering how pride continues to creep into my thoughts, my words and my actions. I have been praying daily to be purified of pride and in this the Lord has been teaching me so much. 

For me, pride was mainly a way of thinking. This didn’t come from myself, for I was made good. My own thoughts do not originate in anything evil, but I can however be trained to think a certain way by Satan. Conversely, the Holy Spirit has the power to renew my mind and heal my thoughts, words and deeds. 

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Romans 12:2

Many would not know that I struggle with pride because I have worked so hard to keep it hidden. In seeing my pride for what it is, I am finding out that by trying to keep it hidden all these years, it has not served me well. In covering up my pride instead of being healed from it, I have been living a life of false humility. The root of pride still remained in me and actually was festering under the surface for many years. I had gotten so good at keeping it hidden, that I even fooled myself into believing I was humble. 

False humility does a pretty good job of hiding one’s pride from others, but there are two negative things that happen as a result of false humility. This first is that the pride remains. False humility blinds the soul to the pride, so pride doesn’t get acknowledged and thus it can never be brought to the Lord for healing. Jesus the healer of all of our miseries, is waiting for us to come to Him. We must be open to seeing ourselves as we are, right in the midst of our sinfulness, so that we can surrender our sins to Jesus totally and completely. 

For me, this was the first step. The Holy Spirit revealed to me my pride and I had a choice, I could continue to cover it up, or I could take it to the Lord in the Sacrament of Confession. I can honestly say that continuing to hide it would have been so much easier. The work of purification is really hard, but the fruit of our willingness to be purified of all of our darkest sins, is always so much more than any pain we may suffer as a result. 

The second thing that false humility did was to hide not only the pride, but also to hide me. It hid who I was created to be, with all of my gifts and charisms that were given to me by God. So while false humility may have kept the outward manifestation of my pride at bay, it also kept the outward manifestation of the Holy Spirit, which is seen through my charisms, hidden from the world. 

For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.

2 Timothy 1:7

True humility is not being shy or passive, although this is what the enemy had convinced me of through the doctrine of false humility. Passivity or cowardice is not of God, but comes from the enemy who is trying to get us to not use our gifts. True humility requires that you understand who you are before others and before God, but all so that you can use the gifts you have been given to glorify God. The purpose of humility is to render to God what is God’s. To glorify Him instead of ourselves, for we are but empty vessels without the Love of God to enliven us. It is God’s love that we participate in through the power of the Holy Spirit, but because we use our hands and feet, our words and deeds, to do the work, we tend to glorify ourselves through pride instead of giving all glory to God. When we glorify ourselves, we are stealing God’s glory from Him.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, 

As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.

This spirit of timidity or cowardice has essentially ruled my life for so long. I was a super shy little girl, an awkward teenager who never had much to say, and for the first part of my adulthood, a very passive adult. Timidity told me to remain hidden, to not speak up, because I really didn’t have anything important or interesting to say. I was led to believe that only in being passive, were you being humble and kind. Cowardice was right there as I passively journeyed through life on unsteady ground, slipping over and over again into sin and the acceptance of immoralities.

Believing this doctrine of the spirit of passivity has stopped me from being bold in the faith. It has stomped out my courage and has led me to think that God didn’t really need me for anything at all. But in reality the Lord has designed each one of us to be channels of His grace and mercy to the world. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we have been given an important participation in the Kingdom of God. We can choose to reject the gift of the Holy Spirit or we can choose to live from it. 

This recent discovery has led me to the place of desiring to be more courageous in my faith. It has given me an understanding of what St Teresa of Avila called, ‘great confidence’.

We must have great confidence, for it is most important that we should not cramp our good desires, but should believe that, with God’s help, if we make continual efforts to do so, so shall attain, though perhaps not at once, to that which many saints have reached through his favor… His Majesty desires and loves courageous souls if they have no confidence in themselves, but walk in humility, and I have never seen any such person hanging back on this road, nor any soul that, under the guise of humility, acted like a coward, go as far in many years as the courageous soul can go in a few.

(Life, XIII)

In great confidence, I now desire the heights of holiness and I desire for God to use me in order to draw others up to Him. This is what it means to be truly humble. This is what it means to be willing to take the harder route, to have high ideals, to do noble things, to be willing to suffer even unto death. In true humility we trust in the Lord alone. We believe in His promises and we are willing to get outside of ourselves, in order to build up the Kingdom of God.