“OF ALL VICES, PRIDE IS THE GREAT QUEEN,” SALVATION IS THROUGH HUMILITY
Today’s general audience was held in St. Peter’s Square. It was a nice day but for pilgrims who have to arrive early to get their seats in the square, the morning temperatures can be cold. The audience generally runs from 9 to 10am and the temps are not that warm in that hour!
As you can see by these photos from EWTN’S Daniel Ibanez, Pope Francis toured the square in the white papal jeep before ascending to the stage area.
Once seated, the Holy Father began the weekly audience by stating, “today’s catechesis will be read by Monsignor Giroli, one of my helpers, because I still have a cold and cannot read well. Thank you!”
Msgr. Pierluigi Giroli is an official from the Secretariat of State. The multi-language summaries of the main catechesis were read by Vatican employees.
The weekly audience catechesis cycle on virtues and vices closes today with the pope looking at pride and humility.
“In our catechetical journey on the vices and virtues, today we come to the last of the vices: pride,” he began. “The ancient Greeks defined it with a word that could be translated “excessive splendor.” Indeed, pride is self-exaltation, conceit, vanity. The term also appears in that series of vices that Jesus lists to explain that evil always comes from the heart of man. The proud man is one who thinks he is much more than he really is; one who frets about being recognized as greater than others, always wants to see his own merits recognized, and despises others, deeming them inferior to himself.
“Of all vices, pride is the great queen,” continued the Pope. “It is no accident that, in the Divine Comedy, Dante places it in the very first level of purgatory: those who give in to this vice are far from God, and the correction of this evil requires time and effort, more than any other battle to which the Christian is called.
The Holy Father then outlined what he called “the long list of symptoms that reveal a person’s succumbing to the vice of pride, noting it is an evil with an obvious physical appearance: the proud man is haughty, he has a “stiff neck,” that is, he has a stiff neck that does not bend. He is a man easily led to scornful judgment: with no reason, he passes irrevocable judgments on others, who seem to him hopelessly inept and incapable.
Continuing that thought, Francis said the haughty man, “forgets that Jesus in the Gospels assigned us very few moral precepts, but on one of them he was uncompromising: never judge. You realize that you are dealing with a proud person when, on offering him a little constructive criticism, or making a completely harmless remark, he reacts in an exaggerated manner, as if someone had offended his majesty: he goes into a rage, shouts, interrupts relations with others in a resentful manner.
Concluding the catechesis on pride, the Pope said “salvation comes through humility, the true remedy for every act of pride. In the Magnificat, Mary sings of the God who by His power scatters the proud in the sick thoughts of their hearts. It is useless to steal anything from God, as the proud hope to do, because after all He wants to give us everything. This is why the apostle James, to his community wounded by infighting originating in pride, writes, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble”
Pope Francis then urged “dear brothers and sisters, let us take advantage of this Lent to fight against our pride.”
Joan's Rome 