Pints With Aquinas - Pride and Vainglory: What is Pride REALLY?! | Mthr Natalia 8 Evil Thoughts Episode 4

Episode Date: June 23, 2024

Mother continues her mini series on the eight evil thoughts. In the final episode she addresses Vainglory and Pride. Are they the same? What is the difference? 🤝 💸 Support the Channel: https://mattfradd.locals.com 🎧 Mother's Podcast: https://whatgodisnot.com/ 🖥️ Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ 🟢 Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/pintswithaquinas 👕 Merch: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com 🚫 FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/matt 🔵 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd  

Glory to Jesus Christ. I'm Mother Natalia, a Byzantine Catholic nun from Christ the Bridegroom Monastery and this is Pines with Aquinas. Today I'm finishing up our series on the eight evil thoughts, which is maybe a cause of great rejoicing for some of you who have been waiting to move on to more cheerful topics. So today we are talking about vainglory and pride. Before I get into that, there are two notes that I want to make. One is that I want to make a correction, which is appropriate on the episode

about Vainglory and Pride. I want to make a correction about the last episode, which is that in my closing prayer, as I was praying through the intercession of different saints, I included Evagrius, and as it was coming out of my mouth, I was like, Evagrius is not a canonized saint. And then I meant to, anyways, I meant to ask Thursday to edit that out before the episode was published, but then I forgot. So just for the sake of correct information, Evagrius is not a canonized saint. I don't know why actually, but

he's not. He is considered one of the fathers though. Okay, so Vainglory and Pride is what we're talking about today. So Vainglory is very close to Pride. The two are super related, which is why, as I mentioned in the introduction episode to this series, Gregory the Great, Saint Gregory the Great combined Vainglory and Pride. So, I'll try to make some distinctions as I go,

but quite frankly, I'm not super clear. And like, I often get muddied in this. And so, conveniently, I don't need to distinguish them very much because I just have so much of both. So there's that. But one distinction that's made in L'Arche's book is that vainglory is emphasizing the praise of others, whereas pride is about the praise of others, whereas pride is about the praise of ourselves. But we see both

aspects in both of the passions, and so in both of these thoughts. So starting with Vainglory, St. John Cashion, who again received the Eight Evil Thoughts from Evagrius and brought them out west, St. John Cashin mentions two kinds of vainglory. He says the first is that by which we are uplifted because of carnal and external things. So this is I think what most people consider when they think of vainglory. This is your clothing, your hairstyle, a beautiful voice, things like that, the externals. But it can also be in this first kind of Vainglory things like having a certain skill or being intelligent or having a

good memory or something like that. But these are the things that are natural to us that we become vainglorious about, the things that are carnal and external. And then the second kind of vainglory that Cassian talks about is he says, that by which we are inflamed with the desire for empty praise because of spiritual and hidden things. So Evagrius, I almost just called him Saint Evagrius again. Okay. Evagrius points out that vainglory and pride, he says, so

I'll just quote him directly actually. He says, alone among the thoughts, those of vainglory and pride arise after the defeat of the other thoughts. So, this is why vainglory and pride arise after the defeat of the other thoughts. So this is why vainglory and pride are so dangerous is because one of the reasons they're so dangerous is that unlike the other passions or the other evil thoughts, the more we overcome it, the more of a danger it becomes, right? Because we become vainglorious even about our virtues, about those things that are spiritual and hidden. And there's this great, so the elders describe this passion or this thought as being like an onion that has several layers and every time you peel off more there's a layer underneath. So St. John Climacus has this great little bit that I think

summarizes Vainglory well. He says, the sun shines on all alike and Vainglory beams on all activities. For instance, I am Vainglorious when I fast and when I relax the fast in order to be unnoticed, I am again vainglorious over my prudence. When well-dressed, I am quite overcome by vainglory, and when I put on poor clothes, I am vainglorious again. When I talk, I am defeated, and when I am silent, I am again defeated by it. However I throw this prickly pear, a spike stands upright." So I have a really great example of this, of Vainglory in my own life.

So a few years ago, those who listen to the podcast that I have with my spiritual father, it's called What God Is Not, and some of you might remember this from a few years ago, because we've referenced it a few times since then. But on the podcast, I said something about an ontological change that happens at, I don't even remember what we were talking about other than I used the phrase ontological change. And my spiritual father says, well, I don't know actually if there's an ontological change that happens there. And so then we have this whole discussion back and forth for several minutes.

And after several minutes, I finally say, I need to say something. I don't actually know what the word ontological means. And it was just, oh man, it was so embarrassing because I'm starting to blush right now just thinking about it because I am vainglorious. But the thing is, the reason this wasn't, it wasn't, well, I don't know, probably it was pride as well. But the reason I think of it as vainglory is because

it wasn't like I was convinced that I was correct and I'm arguing with him and trying to prove my point because I'm correct. It was that I didn't want to reveal that I used a word that I didn't know what it meant and I was embarrassed by that and I wanted people to have a good opinion of me and praise me for my intelligence in this big word that I used of ontological. And yeah, so anyways, I think that's a good example. Moving on, St. Maximus the confessor makes the point that it's not glory, but vainglory that's evil. Because we were created, this is just like the other evil

thoughts that I've talked about, there is some good desire, there's something that we're created with, but it's meant to direct us towards God and we turn it in on ourselves. Because we were created to desire glory. If you don't want glory, something needs healed there because you should desire glory. But we should desire glory in our union with God. So if to name a thought of vain glory, one of the ways this thought manifests is in saying, I want praise from man above praise from God. And I want to clarify, I don't mean that to say that it's bad to praise one another. Because the beauty of praising one another is that we're

conveying a reality to one another, we're helping one another to understand some truths about ourselves. And that's the reminder that I would give that I've given in talking about the other evil thoughts is to ask the question if this is about illness, if this is about damage in our relationship with the Lord, ask the question of is this helping or hurting our spiritual health? Because I think it's very important, for instance, to praise and affirm my spiritual children, to help them know, my spiritual directives, to help them know that, know their own goodness and beauty in order to know the reality of how they are seen in in God's eyes. But that's not about me praising them just for the sake of our relationship,

that's part of it. But there's ultimately the knowing the reality of how we're seen by the Father. Pride, then to move on, St. John Climacus says the only difference between these two passions, meaning Vainglorian Pride, is such as there is between a child and a man, between wheat and bread. For the one is the beginning and the other the end." So many of the fathers talk about how vainglory leads to pride, it concludes in pride, it builds up to pride. Another viewpoint, which is less from the ascetical tradition, but Gregory the Great, for example, as he's ordering the vices, the passions, he calls pride the first of all the passions, with vainglory being the first-born fruit of pride. So he says the pride comes first. Again, I don't know that these distinctions are super helpful, but I want to make sure I'm at least conveying the information so you can discern if that's helpful for your own spiritual life.

So just as there were two forms of vainglory, cashing gives two forms of pride. So the first manifests most significantly in our relationship with fellow men, and the second in our relationship with fellow men, and the second in our relationship with God. So in that first kind of pride, there's a lot of comparison, and we become blinded to our own faults. We feel the need to belittle others in order to exalt ourselves,

or to convince ourselves and other people that if something's wrong it's their fault, that way it's not our fault, that way we can maintain this image of ourselves to ourselves. Again, this is pride is more about, like I said earlier, pride is the praise of self, whereas vainglory is the praise from others. So I have a great example of this actually from just this morning. And my mom told me that I could share this, so just so all of you know that. But I got an email this morning from my mom letting me know. She had just a rough day yesterday because she had had a difficult exchange with someone and and she reached out to me today to tell me that she had

decided to reach out to this person and tell them like she she apologized to them because this other person had had opened up to her in an attempt to move forward in relationship and my mom had responded in a way of like attack, I guess, is the best way to describe it. And it was because my mom was hurting, because she had been hurt by this person, and so she was kind of like attacking in return, but in this particular exchange, she recognized that they actually didn't deserve to be spoken to that way, and that wasn't helpful for relationship, but she was in so much pain

and she was wanting to be right in this, that that's how she responded. And so I was just so moved by the fact that she reached back out to him. I was unsurprised because my mom is amazing, but I was really moved that she had reached back out to this person to say, I'm sorry I reacted that way and I want you to feel safe to still do that in the future

and I'm going to work hard to not respond that way again, or to react that way again, which I thought was just, yeah, really tremendous. So I want to share a quote I want to share a quote, a little bit from Dr. Larcher. And in this bit, he's kind of paraphrasing St. Gregory the Great, St. Philassius, St. John Cassian, and I think that's it. And he says, this passion, the passion of pride, is also revealed in a certain aggression, sometimes expressed as irony, but sometimes also as bitterness in response to the questions of others, a guarded silence in certain circumstances, a general animosity, the desire to offend one's neighbor, and ease in doing so. This aggression regularly appears in response to the smallest criticisms offered by others." So an easy example of

this in my own life. One of my obedience is at the monastery is to manage the calendar for our community, which you would be amazed at how complicated that is. But anyways, so I managed the calendar and there are days in which I just feel totally inept, right? But I don't want to admit to myself that I'm inept because I want to keep this image of myself for myself of I'm really good at this, I'm super organized, I'm totally good at the things that I do, I'm very skilled and so on and so forth. And so, and I'm really put together and all the things that anyone who's met me know is not true. And especially my poor sisters who live with me. But because of this, because I don't want this image of myself to be damaged, one of the other sisters might ask me a totally

innocuous question, such as, hey, what time does this thing start or something like that? And I am just belligerent. And I might just snap back, especially if it's a day that I'm like particularly struggling to keep up this image of myself. And I'll start to come up with excuses for or explanations for why the time is not just written on the calendar and so on and so forth. And she's just genuinely just asking a question. But so when we get, I think that's, yeah, just something to note in ourselves that when we get super defensive, there's probably some amount of pride going on in there. So that's something to be attentive to. The second kind of pride is

this pride that manifests, especially in our relationship with God. And this is the pride that provoked the fall of Satan. St. John Climacus describes the fall of Satan as saying, He considered himself equal to God as if like God, he had no need of any other. And this is the pride of the fall as well, right? Satan tells Adam and Eve that they will be like God if they eat of this fruit. And this is, again, this is the perversion of what we were actually created for because we are called to be like God.

But we're called to be like God in Him and through Him, not by grasping at that on our own. Dr. Larcher describes this in the book as this perversion that pride is, he says, man was destined to accomplish this elevation of himself towards God in God by actualizing the likeness to God on the basis of the virtues that had been placed as seeds in his nature and by progressively appropriating the grace given by the Spirit. So this pride, Macarius, Evagrius, and Maximus say that this pride, and many others, comes from attributing our good works to ourselves and not to God. So this, the thought, the evil thought of pride might say something like, if I try hard enough, I will be holy.

This is, in another episode I was talking about Pelagianism and this is the concept of Pelagianism. It's all about what I do and not about what God is doing in me. Which as I was as I was praying with that this morning I realized that this is part of why pride is so damaging because if we if we can't see our dignity and our goodness as being from the fact that we were made in the image of God, then we're not going to see that in others either. And this is why pride is so damaging in our relationships with others, in our relationship with God, because we're not actually accurately seeing others or ourselves. Because if our goodness is actually about what we do and how talented we are,

how smart we are, what does that mean about the dignity of the paralytic? What does that mean about the dignity of the baby? What does that mean about, you know, and yeah, so this is the danger of pride is that we have a distorted view of reality, which is what comes with all of the evil thoughts is a distorted view of reality. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Thank you for this tool of evangelization, this tool of being able to bring to others the fruits of the teachings of the Fathers.

I ask that you grant all of those who are listening a spirit of discernment that they may hold fast to that which is true and discard anything else. Father, I ask you to work in their lives for your glory. Help them to desire glory in you and not glory apart from you. Help them to receive and not to grasp. And I ask all of these things for myself as well, Father. As I struggle with my own vainglory and pride, grant me and those who are listening a humility so that we can enter more deeply into healthy relationship with you and healthy relationship with one another. I ask all of this through the prayers of

Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint Nathaniel, Saint Maximus the Confessor, Saint John Chrysostom, Saint John Cashion, Saint John Climacus, through the prayers of Saint Dorotheus and Saint Thalassius, through the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos and all the saints, and through the prayers of our Holy Fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us. Amen.