How to grow in the fight against pride

Before fighting an enemy, one must know how to recognize it. Yet pride is rarely where one looks for it: we imagine it loud, boastful, arrogant — whereas it is most often silent, interior, and disguised. The first clarification, therefore, is what the vice of pride truly is, and what must not be confused with it.

Pride as the "disordered appetite for one's own excellence"

The classic definition comes from Saint Thomas Aquinas, who devotes an entire question of the Summa Theologiae to this vice. Pride — superbia — is defined there as a disordered appetite for one's own excellence: not the legitimate desire for the good, but the will to rise above what one is, by referring to oneself what belongs to God^[1].

Saint Augustine had said it even more briefly, in a famous formula: pride is "the appetite for perverse exaltation."

"What is pride but the appetite for perverse exaltation? For it is a perverse exaltation to forsake the principle to which the soul ought to cleave, and to become in some measure its own principle." — Saint Augustine, The City of God, book XIV, ch. 13^[2]

The heart of pride is therefore an inversion: man, who has received everything, behaves as if he were the source of what he possesses. Augustine thereby sums up the whole history of the two cities: one is built on "love of self even to contempt of God", the other on "love of God even to contempt of self". Pride is precisely that first love carried to its end^[3].

Pride, vanity, self-love: distinguishing the enemies

The combat requires naming precisely what one is facing, because tradition distinguishes several faces of the same evil:

• Pride in the strict sense: believing oneself to be the source of one's good, refusing to depend on God and on others, wanting to be first.
• Vain glory (vanity): not only esteeming oneself, but seeking the esteem of others, chasing reputation, praise, and the gaze of others. Saint Gregory makes it the first of the "daughters" of pride — the first named of the seven vices born from it —, a filiation Saint Thomas takes up^[4].
• Self-love: the spontaneous attachment to oneself that colors all our acts, and which spiritual combat is meant to purify.
• Presumption: relying on one's own strength, even in the order of salvation — pride applied to the spiritual life.

These nuances are not gratuitous erudition: one does not fight vanity (need for the gaze of others) in the same way as presumption (confidence in one's own strength). Recognizing which one is working in us is already an act of lucidity.

What pride is not: healthy esteem and joy in the good

Fighting pride does not mean denying the good God has placed in us, hating oneself, or refusing every joy in doing good. That would be to fall into a false humility that is itself a trick of self-love. Saint Francis de Sales warns clearly: recognizing the gifts received is not pride, provided one refers them back to God^[5].

The boundary is therefore precise. To rejoice in a talent while giving thanks to the one who gave it is humility; to glory in it as though one were its author is pride. To see the good in oneself and attribute it to God, to see the evil and know oneself to be its author: according to Saint Benedict, this is the golden rule that disarms the vice at its root^[6]. Pride, then, is not self-esteem, but esteem stolen from God.

To measure the stakes of the combat, one must understand why tradition places pride apart: not as one sin more, but as the source from which the others spring. Four scriptural and patristic data establish this.

"The beginning of all sin is pride"

Scripture states the principle without ambiguity. Sirach makes it the origin of every fault:

"Man's pride begins when he turns away from the Lord, when his heart withdraws from his Maker, for pride begins with sin, and whoever clings to it brings forth a flood of abominations [...]." — Sirach 10:12-13^[7]

The book of Proverbs announces its inevitable fruit — the fall:

"Pride goes before collapse, and pretension, the fall." — Proverbs 16:18^[8]

Saint Thomas takes up this verse from Sirach to teach that pride is "the beginning of all sin", because it is that movement of the soul away from God from which every disorder proceeds^[9]. Every sin contains, at its root, a refusal to submit — that is, a grain of pride.

The fall of Lucifer and Adam: the archetype of the vice

Cassian, to show the power of this vice, goes back to its first victim: an angel of light. A single movement of pride was enough to cast the archangel down into the depths of hell.

"See that angel whom the splendor of his beauty had caused to be called Lucifer. A single movement of pride casts him down from the height of heaven. He was among the first ranks of the Angels, and his fall drags him to the depths of hell. If this proud thought could make so noble and privileged a nature fall so low, how much should this chastisement make us fear for ourselves who are so weak!" — John Cassian, The Institutes, book XII, ch. 4^[10]

The mechanism is precise, and it is exactly ours: Lucifer "imagined that this splendor and spiritual beauty came to him from his own nature and not from the infinite goodness of the Creator. He persuaded himself, in his pride, that he did not need divine help in order to persevere"^[11]. The same temptation was offered to Adam and Eve — "you will be like gods, knowing good and evil" (Gen 3:5)^[12] — and brought "to the earth the seed of all vices and all evils"^[13]. Pride is thus the sin of origins, the one by which every fall, angelic and human, began.

Pride, the "queen of the vices" commanding her whole army

Saint Gregory the Great gave this intuition its classical form in the sixth century. In his Moralia on Job, he describes the vices as an army besieging the citadel of the soul, and at their head a queen: pride. From this root come the seven principal vices (or "capital sins"), which in turn produce a multitude of sins.

"The queen of the vices, pride, when she has fully conquered and subdued a heart, immediately hands it over to seven principal vices, as to commanders of an army, to be ravaged." — Saint Gregory the Great, Moralia on Job, book XXXI, ch. 45^[14]

The following table summarizes this genealogy, which structured the whole moral theology of the Middle Ages and remains beneath the catechetical list of the seven capital sins^[15].

Reading the table: two usages coexist, and Saint Thomas himself articulates them (Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 162, a. 8). In Saint Gregory, pride is not counted among the seven capital sins: it is their root and queen, commanding the seven principal vices — vain glory, envy, anger, sadness (acedia), avarice, gluttony, lust (Morals on Job, XXXI, 45). The current catechetical usage, taken up in § 1866 of the Catechism "following St John Cassian and St Gregory the Great," counts pride itself in the list of the seven capital sins. In both cases, fighting pride means striking the vices at their source: each capital vice is a particular way of seeking an apparent good while turning away from God, and all proceed from the same proud refusal to depend on him.

To fight pride is therefore to strike the vices at their source: see the fight against envy, against anger, against acedia and their companion articles, all grafted onto this same root.

Why God himself resists pride

The final reason, and the gravest, is that pride is the only vice against which Scripture says God himself rises up. The other sins harm the one who commits them or his neighbor; pride, by contrast, "attacks God himself."

"Scripture does not say that God resists those who are subject to the other vices; he does not fight the intemperate, the fornicators, the angry, the avaricious, but only the proud. The other vices harm those who give themselves to them, or those who are their object; but pride attacks God himself, and that is why God rises up to resist it." — John Cassian, The Institutes, book XII, ch. 7^[16]

This is the constant teaching of Scripture, from the Old to the New Testament: "God opposes the proud; to the humble he gives grace" (1 Pet 5:5; Jas 4:6, citing Prov 3:34)^[17]. Pride closes the soul to grace, because it claims to do without it; and God can fill only open hands. This is the ultimate stake of the combat: not a mere moral improvement, but the very possibility of receiving God.

Here is the most important distinction for the combat, the one Cassian places at the threshold of his whole book. There are, he says, two prides — and the more dangerous one is not the one we think.

"There are two kinds of pride: the pride that attacks those advanced in the spiritual life, and the pride that torments beginners and the sensual. In both these prides the soul rises up against God and against men; but the first more particularly offends God, and the second men." — John Cassian, The Institutes, book XII, ch. 2^[18]

The carnal pride of beginners

The first, the most visible, is carnal or gross pride: that of beginners and the sensual. It is recognized by outward signs that are easy to spot — boasting, the need to put oneself forward, impatience at being corrected, harshness toward inferiors, dispute, ostentation. This is the pride everyone calls "pride." Painful for those around it, it at least has the advantage of being visible: it can be named, blushed over, and fought.

Spiritual pride, "a monster more cruel," which attacks the perfect

The second is infinitely more subtle: spiritual pride, the one that precisely lies in wait for those who have conquered the other vices. It does not boast of riches or pleasures, but of virtues; it does not chase worldly honors, but an interior excellence. This is the pride Cassian describes as the most terrible:

"Pride is the last enemy left for us to fight; but, although this disease is placed last among those that torment us, it must be placed first by its origin and importance. It is a monster more cruel than all the others; it attacks especially the perfect, and it rages particularly against those who were most firmly established in virtue." — John Cassian, The Institutes, book XII, ch. 1^[19]

Such is the peculiar cruelty of this vice: it destroys not one virtue, but all at once, and it uses good itself to enter. "When pride possesses an unhappy soul, it is a cruel tyrant who has seized the citadel of the virtues, and from there hurls thunderbolts over the whole city and destroys it from top to bottom"^[20]. That is why the fight against pride is the last: one truly faces it only after having advanced, when victory over the other passions gives self-love a new prey — the pride of having conquered.

Why this combat is the longest and hardest

From this analysis follows a rule of spiritual strategy: one is never done with pride. The other vices recede as one progresses; pride, however, grows with progress, because it finds nourishment in it. The richer the soul becomes in virtues, the more exposed it is to attributing them to itself. This is why tradition never imagines a "definitive victory" over pride in this life, but a combat renewed every day, until death. Far from discouraging, this lucidity protects: the one who knows himself always threatened remains on guard; the one who believes himself healed is already recaptured.

How can one know where one stands? Around 1124 — editions date the work to the early 1120s —, the young Saint Bernard of Clairvaux wrote The Steps of Humility and Pride. Taking up Saint Benedict's twelve degrees of humility, he turns them around like a mirror: to each rung by which one ascends toward God by lowering oneself corresponds a rung by which one descends toward the fall by exalting oneself. Pride is a ladder, but one goes down it.

Ascending by lowering oneself, descending by exalting oneself

Bernard grasped the dynamic of pride: it is not a state, but a slope. One enters it through almost nothing — a curious look, a distraction — and each step makes the next easier, all the way to blindness. Knowing these degrees makes it possible to identify the precise step where one stands, and therefore to climb back before it is too late. Bernard divides them into three zones, according to their object:

"The first six degrees contain contempt of our brothers; the next four, contempt of our superiors; and the last two, contempt of God." — Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, The Steps of Humility and Pride^[21]

Reading the table: the fall begins with almost nothing — a curious look — and ends in hardening. The combat is won especially at the top of the ladder, on the first degrees, where pride is still tiny and easy to stop.

The first degrees: where the combat is won

Bernard's practical teaching is clear: the earlier one acts, the less the effort costs. No one decides one morning to rebel against God (degree 10); one gets there through a long series of small indulgences, beginning with curiosity (degree 1) and levity (degree 2), which one judged insignificant. The wise combatant therefore first watches these small things: the look that escapes, the mind that scatters, the need to speak of oneself. Cutting pride at degree 1 or 4 is the affair of an instant; uprooting it at degree 8 — when one no longer even recognizes one's faults — requires a grace of conversion.

The daily diagnosis: signs that do not lie

Outside monastic language, how can one detect pride in ordinary life? A few symptoms recur constantly among the spiritual masters, and each person can verify them in himself:

• Touchiness: being wounded by a remark, an omission, a lack of consideration. The note that the translator F. de Lamennais attaches, in his 1824 translation, to book II, ch. 2 of The Imitation, makes it the decisive test: "What troubles you is pride, which cannot bear to be corrected"^[22].
• The need to be right: being unable to bear being wrong, wanting the last word, constantly justifying oneself (Bernard's degree 8).
• Comparison: measuring oneself against others, rejoicing at being above, suffering at being below (envy already begins here).
• Harshness in judgment: immediately noticing the defects of others — a sign that one is occupied with oneself, not with God.
• Seeking attention: acting in order to be seen, noticed, approved; becoming discouraged when one is not.

Each of these signs is an alarm: not in order to condemn oneself, but to seize, while it is still warm, the occasion for a contrary act.

Recognizing the enemy is not enough; one needs weapons. The spiritual masters propose a small arsenal, tested and repeatable. They are presented here in order of importance, from the most decisive to the most daily. For the positive means of the opposed virtue — the prayer of humility, the last place, hidden service — see How to grow in humility, which develops them; here, the accent is on resistance to the vice.

The first weapon: "It was not I, but the grace of God"

Cassian, after fifteen chapters on the power of pride, gives the master weapon in one sentence. The secret is not an effort of will, but a reflex: immediately refer every progress back to God as soon as one senses even its shadow.

"We shall be able to escape the snares of this formidable enemy if, whenever we feel that we have made some progress in virtue, we say with the Apostle: 'It was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.'" — John Cassian, The Institutes, book XII, ch. 9 (citing 1 Cor 15:10)^[23]

All pride consists in a theft: attributing to oneself what comes from God. The weapon is therefore to return everything continually: "Have you anything that you did not receive? And if you received it, why boast as though you had not received it?" (1 Cor 4:7)^[24]. Each success, each virtue, each light received in prayer is the occasion for an inward act of restitution. Practiced often, this thanksgiving disarms the vice before it forms.

Distrust of self, confidence in God: Scupoli's strategy

The Theatine Lorenzo Scupoli, in The Spiritual Combat (1589) — one of the most widely read manuals of interior life in history, which Saint Francis de Sales carried with him for eighteen years, reading a few pages of it each day — makes these two dispositions the first two weapons of every combat. They are precisely the two faces of the struggle against pride:

• distrust of oneself: never relying on one's own strength, knowing oneself capable of falling at any moment;
• confidence in God: expecting everything from him, as from an almighty Father.

"If we wish to conquer in this spiritual combat, we must plant four things in our heart [...]. The first is distrust of ourselves; the second, confidence in God; the third, exercise; the fourth, prayer." — Lorenzo Scupoli, The Spiritual Combat, ch. 1^[25]

The balance is everything: distrust alone would lead to discouragement (which is still disappointed pride); confidence alone, to presumption. Together, they keep the soul in the truth — weak in itself, strong in God. It is the weapon perfectly fitted to Cassian's two prides: distrust strikes spiritual pride, while confidence forbids discouragement.

Vigilance over the first movements

Pride is won at the top of Bernard's ladder: on the very first movement, before it becomes thought, then word, then act. This is the weapon of vigilance — guarding the heart like a door. Concretely: noticing, at the instant it is born, the thought that compares, inwardly boasts, or becomes irritated by a remark; and cutting it off immediately by a contrary act (giving thanks, keeping silent, granting that the other is right). On this custody of the heart, see How to grow in spiritual vigilance.

Unmasking spiritual pride

The weapon proper to the advanced combat is to mistrust one's own virtues. As soon as one catches oneself savoring a progress — "how well I pray," "how patient I am," "how much more advanced I am than so-and-so" — spiritual pride is feeding on good. The remedy is not to stop doing good, but to turn one's gaze away from oneself: not measuring one's progress, not watching it like a trophy. The Fathers advised keeping always present not one's virtues, but one's faults and nothingness. This is the object of the article The knowledge of man's nothingness.

Accepting being humbled, contradicted, forgotten

Pride is proved by what it cannot bear: being corrected, contradicted, neglected, or seeing another preferred. The combat is therefore fought, very concretely, in the peaceful reception of daily humiliations. Not seeking them in an unhealthy way, but ceasing to dodge them: taking criticism without justifying oneself, leaving the credit to another, not protesting a small injustice. The translator's note (F. de Lamennais, 1824) accompanying this same chapter of The Imitation (book II, ch. 2) gives the sign of progress:

"The humble man is not irritated, is not moved, even when passion condemns him unjustly." — Translator's note (F. de Lamennais, 1824) accompanying The Imitation of Christ, book II, ch. 2^[26]

Each humiliation accepted without revolt is a blow struck at the root. It is the most effective weapon — and the most feared. The article How to grow in humility details its practice (not justifying oneself, choosing the last place, serving in the shadows).

Recourse to Christ, meek and humble of heart

The supreme weapon, because it no longer rests on us, is to look at Christ. Cassian constructs a striking face-to-face — "one said... the other..." — between the words of pride he lends to the demon and Christ's words of humility: one wanting to ascend, the other wanting to descend. Important clarification: neither the psalmist's cry nor Pharaoh's boast, quoted in Ezekiel's oracle, are literally words of the demon or of Christ — it is Cassian who brings them together typologically to make them the two voices of the combat. Here it is, condensed:

Reading the table: to each pretension of elevation from the rebel (Isaiah, Ezekiel: words Cassian puts in the demon's mouth), Cassian opposes a word of Christ's abasement. The whole combat is summarized here: pride wants to rise and falls; humility descends and is raised.

Source: John Cassian, The Institutes, book XII, ch. 8^[27].

Christ is the physician who came to heal pride by its opposite: "everything that had fallen by pride had to be raised up by humility"^[28]. To contemplate this God who makes himself last — kneeling before his disciples (Jn 13) — is the most powerful of remedies: before such loving abasement, pride has no more arguments.

Here is the dizzying peculiarity of this vice: one can make the fight against pride into a new reason for pride. Three traps await the combatant.

Being proud of fighting pride

This is the most subtle trap: rejoicing in one's progress in humility, knowing oneself to be "less proud" than before, watching one's advance with complacency. Spiritual pride thus slips into the very virtue that was meant to kill it. The only remedy is not to watch oneself fighting: perform acts of humility without keeping count, and leave it to God alone to judge progress. As soon as one feels humble, one is no longer so.

Discouragement, pride in disguise

At the opposite extreme is the belief that feeling worthless, sad, and blocked would be humility. This is false: discouragement is often disappointed self-love that expected better of itself. True humility remains peaceful and trusting, because it was not counting on its own strength. To gnaw over one's falls, to believe oneself a hopeless case, is still to put oneself at the center. The remedy is confidence: see How to grow in confidence.

The false humble and facade humility

The third trap, already named by Bernard (degree 9, feigned confession), is lowering oneself in words so that others will raise us up, speaking ill of oneself so that one may be contradicted, multiplying "I am only a poor sinner" in expectation of a denial. Saint Francis de Sales warns against this feigned humility^[29]. The defense is simple truth: saying neither more evil nor more good of oneself than there is, and silently accepting the real humiliation when it comes, without begging for it in words.

How does one recognize that one is gradually gaining the upper hand over pride? Not by a feeling of having succeeded — that would already be to lose it — but by discreet and verifiable fruits.

Peace and freedom of heart

The one who no longer defends his image has nothing left to lose: neither reputation, nor rank, nor the last word. This death to self-esteem becomes an immense freedom. One ceases to be at the mercy of others' gaze; every remark no longer wounds; peace settles where touchiness once reigned. "The one who no longer expects anything from men can no longer be disappointed by them."

Charity that no longer judges

The more one knows one's own misery, the less one judges another's. This is an unfailing sign: the combatant against pride gradually stops noticing the defects of his neighbor, because he is occupied with his own. Saint Paul gives the measure: "In humility, regard others as superior to yourselves" (Phil 2:3)^[30]. Victory over pride makes one gentle, indulgent, slow to condemn.

Openness to grace and prayer

Finally, the soul that lowers itself opens to God. The tax collector who does not dare raise his eyes "went down justified", unlike the self-satisfied Pharisee (Lk 18:14)^[31]. Pride had closed the hand; humility opens it, and God can finally fill it. The defeat of pride is therefore not a loss: it is the entrance of grace. "He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly" (Lk 1:52)^[32].

One does not conquer pride by an effort of pride — that would be absurd. One conquers it by uniting oneself to the one who has already conquered it. In the end, the whole combat is summed up in letting the humble Christ live in us.

"Learn from me": humility as counter-poison

Jesus is the only one who said "Learn from me" — and he said it about humility of heart:

"Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am meek and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your soul." — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 11:29^[33]

Pride had brought Lucifer down from heaven; Christ's humility raises man back from his fall. God "willed to heal it by the contrary" the venom of pride: where man had wanted to "be like God", God became man and servant. Fighting pride therefore means, positively, learning from Christ — not imitating an abstract virtue, but entering into his movement of loving abasement.

Uniting oneself to Christ's abasement unto the cross

The summit of this combat is to let Christ configure us to his kenosis — his voluntary self-emptying:

"Who, having the condition of God, did not jealously retain the rank that made him equal to God. But he emptied himself, taking the condition of a servant [...]. He lowered himself, becoming obedient unto death, even death on a cross." — Letter to the Philippians 2:6-8^[34]

There lies the term of the combat: not a humility conquered by sheer force, but a humility received, that of Christ living in us. Every renunciation of putting oneself forward, every accepted humiliation, every hidden service is a way of descending with him — and therefore, according to the law of the Kingdom, of being raised: "Whoever humbles himself will be exalted" (Lk 14:11)^[35]. The last word in the fight against pride does not belong to our effort, but to the grace of him who, "meek and humble of heart", has already conquered for us.

• How to grow in humility — the positive virtue opposed to pride: degrees, concrete means, exercises.
• The knowledge of man's nothingness, which produces humility — the foundation: knowing oneself truly before God.
• The necessity of humility and the danger of pride — why this virtue is central and its opposite so dangerous.
• What do the saints say about humility? — a florilegium of the great sayings of the saints on humility and pride.
• How to grow in spiritual vigilance — custody of the heart, the weapon against first movements.
• How to grow in confidence — the twin disposition without which the combat turns into discouragement.
• How to grow in obedience — the weapon that breaks self-will, the root of pride.