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The inability of the heart to feel the truth of the words in prayer comes from heartfelt unbelief and insensibility of one’s sinfulness, and this in turn stems from a secret feeling of pride. According to the extent of his feelings during prayer, a person learns whether he is proud or humble: the more sensitive and ardent the prayer, the more humble he is; the more insensitive, the prouder he is (1). In order to inherit Heaven and eternal life and to be considered worthy of the eternal community of holy Angels and holy men, one must here on earth first purify oneself, hate sin and love truth, one truth, and thus become like God and His saints, “for what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? What does light have in common with darkness? (2 Cor. 6:14). The saints spent their whole lives preparing and cleansing themselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit; they especially need to learn humility, because the beginning of sin is pride. Dennitsa fell with pride (4). Keep a close watch on the manifestations of pride: it manifests itself unnoticed, especially in being upset and irritable with others for the most unimportant reasons (6). When a person begins to pray, he must humble his proud heart, throw away earthly vanity from it and introduce into him a living and undoubted faith (6). 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 hate 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 those who curse you” (Matthew 5:44). Say: “They do not slander me, but my passion, they do not beat me, but this snake, which nests in my heart and hurts when it is slandered, 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: he who suffered dishonor here will not be subjected to it in that age (6). Be as meek, humble, and simple in your dealings with everyone as possible, considering yourself unhypocritically lower than everyone else in your mental state, that is, more sinful and weaker than everyone else. I am the first of sinners, speak up. From pride comes pompousness, cold treatment without any sincerity towards those who are lower than us or from whom we do not hope to benefit ourselves (6). Out of masterly or, better yet, monetary pride and incomprehensible malice, we often do not want to honor the speech of those who feed from us, we treat them with hostility, instead of us being more humble before them, as their servants, according to the word of the Lord: “Whoever wants to be great among you, let him be your servant” (Matthew 20:26), in order to thereby aggravate the reward of the Master through sincere, unfeigned service to Him. in the person of His least brothers! Oh, meek and humble-hearted Creator, Life-Giver, Redeemer, Nourisher and Guardian, our Lord Jesus! Teach us love, meekness and humility by Your Holy Spirit and strengthen us in these virtues most dear to You, so that our hearts are not puffed up by Your rich gifts, and we do not imagine that we feed, satisfy and support anyone. You, the common Breadwinner of all, nourish, satisfy and preserve; everyone is content and at peace under the wings of Your goodness, generosity and love for mankind, and not under ours, for we ourselves need to take refuge in the shadow of Your wings every moment of our lives. Our eyes are directed to You, our God, “as the eyes of servants are directed to the hands of their masters, as the eyes of a servant are directed to the hands of her mistress... until He has mercy on us” (Ps. 122:2, 3) (6). There is absolutely nothing to be proud of for a Christian who does works of righteousness, for he is saved and is constantly saved from all evil only through faith alone, just as he does works of righteousness by the same faith. “For by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this (and faith itself) is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one should boast” (Eph. 2:8, 9), so that no one would be proud of anything (6). An angry and proud person is ready to see only pride and malice in others and is glad if others say bad things about any of his acquaintances, especially those who live happily, richly, but are not close to him spiritually, and the worse it is, the more he is glad that others are bad, and he is perfection in front of them, and is ready to see in them only one evil and compare them with demons. Oh, malice! Oh, pride! Oh, lack of love! No, you find something good in an evil person and rejoice about this goodness and speak with joy about good qualities. There is no person in whom there is not at least some good, but cover the evil that is in him with love and pray to God for him, so that the evil God will create good with His goodness 17. Do not be an evil abyss yourself (7). Let us be afraid of the petrified insensibility of our sins; let us fear the pride of our hearts, which says: I do not need forgiveness of sins, I am not guilty, I am not a sinner; or: my sins are light, human, - as if it were necessary for them to be demonic; or: It’s not bad for me to live in my sins. This is satanic pride, and Satan himself repeats the same words in your heart. Let us feel deeply, deeply, with all our hearts, our countless iniquities, we will sigh for them from the depths of our souls, we will shed tears of tenderness for them and we will appease the angry Master. Let us not justify ourselves in the least, like the Pharisees and hypocrites, for, as it is said, no one living will be justified before God (Ps. 142:2), and only by sincere repentance of sins can we appease God. Let us leave indifference and coldness, let us work for the Lord with a burning spirit; Let us not forget that after a long period of lawless life we ​​have now come to appease the Lord of our life and our righteous Judge. Is this a time of coldness and indifference, which is not approved even in the community when dealing with people? Shouldn't our whole soul turn into spiritual fire and pour itself out in tears of sincere repentance? O our God, our God! Our iniquities, in the proper sense, have multiplied more than the power of our head, more than the sand of the sea, and we do not feel them, we are indifferent to them, we do not even stop loving them. What if you see iniquity, Lord, Lord, who will stand! (Ps. 129:3). Grant to all of us, Lord, a contrite spirit and a humble heart, so that we may bring You true repentance (7). Pride usually shows itself in the fact that someone infected with it makes himself equal to everyone, or at least many, who are higher than himself in age, in power, in ability, and does not tolerate being inferior to them. If a proud person is a subordinate, he does not respect his boss as he should, does not want to bow to him, does not respect his orders, and carries them out reluctantly, out of fear. He equals himself with all educated people and does not give preference to anyone or to a very, very few. If he is a scientist or even not a scientist, a son or daughter, he does not pay due respect to parents and benefactors, especially simple and rude ones, considering them equal to himself and even lower. You must be extremely careful not to compare yourself with others in any respect, but to place yourself below everyone else, even if you really were in some way better than many or equal to very many. Everything good in us is from God, not ours. “This is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, lest any one should boast” (Eph. 2:8, 9). “Yet one and the same Spirit works all these things...” (1 Cor. 12:11). How can I be proud of someone else’s good and be equal to those who are placed above me by God Himself and public trust? So, “do not sit in first place, lest someone... be more honorable than you... everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14:8, 18:14) (7). Pride in faith manifests itself in the fact that the proud dares to set himself up as a judge of faith and the Church and says: I don’t believe this and I don’t recognize this; I find this unnecessary, this is unnecessary, but this is strange or funny. Pride in faith also reveals itself as boasting in the imaginary knowledge of everything, while it knows very little or is completely blind with the eyes of the soul. This is not worth reading, saying: it is known; These sermons are not worth reading: they are all the same things that I already know. A great degree of human pride is revealed when a mere mortal dares to compare himself with the saints of God and does not see their great and wondrous perfections, acquired by their own exploits with the assistance of the grace of God, perfections that God Himself crowned and glorified in them. He says: why will I honor them, especially pray to them? They are the same people, I pray to God alone, but they don’t know that God Himself commands us to ask for the prayers of the righteous for ourselves. “Only his face will I accept” (Job 42:8) (7). Pride in faith is also revealed in the insensibility of one’s sins, in the Pharisee’s justification and self-praise, in the insensibility of God’s mercies, in ingratitude to God for all that is good, in the inability to feel the need for the praise of God’s magnificence. All those who do not pray to the Lord Almighty, the God of spirits and all flesh, their own Belly, do not pray out of secret pride (7). In every possible way, eradicate from your heart pride that opposes the Holy Spirit, both carnal and spiritual; it certainly lurks in the heart and is clearly revealed in dealing with others or during prayer (7). Pride is the beginning of all sin. The sin of Adam and Eve, who did not listen to their Lord, who listened to His saving and beneficent commandment, is the reason that the human race is still entangled in all sorts of sins; All disasters come from pride... Therefore, we must beware of pride, we must humble ourselves, consider ourselves lower than others. An example of humility is the Lord Jesus Christ. He, being an all-perfect God, “humbled Himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross” (Phil. 2:8). It was not in vain that the Son of God humbled Himself to such an extent. His suffering was necessary to save us from pride and all other sins. If the Son of God had not suffered for us, no one could have been saved; Satan would have swallowed everyone up in his mouth and made them participants in eternal torment; however, even now all those who live in sins and do not repent of them will go into eternal torment. Remember this firmly and humble yourself before others, as the Apostle Paul instructs: “In honoring one another, warn one another” (Rom. 12:10) (9). Where does our passion for exaltation and self-praise come from? From where all our sins came from: from the first ancestral sin. Man was created so that he would love God as the author of his existence most of all, so that he would look at His perfections and imitate them, holyly fulfilling His will. But he loved himself more than God, he wanted to appropriate His perfection for himself, he wanted to be as great as God, he wanted to be a self-righteous man, he was subjected to self-love and pride, and he fell. Thus, exaltation or pride is a soul-destroying passion of a person, making him hostile to God and contemptuous of his neighbors. Can God look with favor on a creature that is puffed up with some of its own perfections and does not find its equal in them, as if we had something of our own? This is the beginning of our passion for self-exaltation. As passion, it is naturally a disease of our soul, which infected it at the moments of the fall of the first people. As a false opinion about one’s perfections, as an illegal movement of the will, it is at the same time the fruit of the suggestions of an evil spirit, which itself, having fallen with pride and envy, carried away man to the fall of the same sins. We know that people did not fall by themselves, but by temptation from the devil. Is it necessary to spread the word that pride or self-praise, combined with the humiliation of others, is a disease of our soul? To be convinced of this, you only need to look at a proud man with the eye of holy faith. What is a person in his present position? A fallen man, broken, covered in wounds. Do you think this comparison is exaggerated? Remember the parable of the Samaritan and the man who fell among the thieves (see Luke 10:30–37). Who does this man represent, who fell among the robbers, beaten and wounded? Who else if not us, tormented by passions, the world and the devil? If such a person were to claim that he is completely healthy and does not feel any pain, what would we say about him? We would not say that he is too sick and close to death, because in his body there is no longer sensitivity that reveals the presence of vital forces in him. This is certainly what we must say about a proud man. Pride, further, is the fruit of the suggestions of an evil spirit. Is it difficult to be sure of this? Pride is a false, exaggerated opinion of one’s own perfections, true or imaginary, combined with offensive humiliation of others. False opinion: where does the lie come from in the world? God is truth. The Holy Scripture shows us one source, one father of lies: your father is the devil, says the Savior to the Jews, and you want to fulfill the lusts of your father. “He was a murderer from the beginning and did not stand in the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks his own way, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). He whispers to a person busy with himself, with his good deeds, that he is the most perfect being, to whom all others should be amazed, that all others are despicable creatures who live in vain in the world and only sin. But judge for yourself how false this is. Is this impudent self-praise really the most perfect being, and is his neighbor so impudently offended by him really like this? Perhaps, at the very time he was condemned, he repented, shed tears about his sins before “he who searches the hearts” (Rev. 2:23) all by God and received forgiveness. Meanwhile, the perfections of one who exalts himself are suspicious by the very fact that he proclaims, trumpets about them before God, whether only in the church, or to everyone. True perfection, true virtue is modest: it loves to hide in secret and does not dare to attribute its own perfections to itself, much less humiliate others. You say about yourself that you are kind, merciful to everyone, zealous for the faith and the Holy Church, and exhaust your flesh with fasting. Wonderful. But who gave you the right to call yourself by the names of these venerable virtues? Who declared you to be kind, merciful, zealous for the Church and Her Holy Rules? God? Angel? Or have you assessed your own virtue? How can we evaluate our deeds? How are we going to weigh them? What measure should we take in this case? Do we know well our unclean heart, which always, or at least for the most part, takes a big part in doing good deeds? Do our virtues not include calculations of pride or other unseemly motives? How easily sometimes the evil impulse that was the cause of our good deed hides from our own consciousness. The poison of sin has penetrated deeply into our soul, and unbeknownst to us, it poisons almost all our virtues. Isn’t it better to look at yourself more often and more closely and notice your shortcomings in the depths of your soul in order to correct them, rather than show off your perfections? And why put them on display, evaluate them ourselves, when there is the most impartial appraiser in heaven - the Lord God, Who will reward “everyone according to his deeds” (Rev. 22:12), of course, knows how to evaluate our deeds. Let us leave it to Him to judge our virtues, and we ourselves, with the fear of God, without exaltation, will work out our salvation (Phil. 2:12) (8). Pride is hidden in secret unbelief: the unbeliever does not want to acknowledge with all his heart, with all his soul, the most excellent in all respects, infinitely more powerful than himself, a Being for whom nothing is impossible and who does what he wants (10). Don’t be proud in any way, even in your thoughts. The word of the Lord is true: “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14:11). We often see the proud flying headlong (10). Prayer of the priest at the Liturgy of Basil the Great. Velelepota (obsolete) – splendor, beauty, goodness. You might be interested in: