How can one conquer and route ambition and prideful thoughts from himself?

A hideous and impure passion! All evil catches a fish in this murky water! God does not even want to hear about a proud person! He takes all grace away from him, so that he might stumble—maybe then he will become humble, as the Scripture says (cf. 1 Pet. 5:5).

He abandons him, and that person becomes a great abomination; He takes from him all sense of beauty, leaves him to roam around in chaos, in all manner of filthy back alleys of the world. He has no image, or likeness, or healthy reason. The holy fathers say truly, “Wherever there was a fall, pride first did its work.” No other passion will liken you to a devil like pride.

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God’s Angels and the Devil’s demons

Angels and Demons

God sent us angels to be our traveling companions and our guides in this life, to guard us and protect us from all evil. They are also our most faithful allies in our struggle against the forces of evil.

When PRIDE affects the soul of a religious person…he does not realize his sins

When pride affects the soul of a religious person, then the latter becomes bold enough to act as a judge of the faith and the Church. “I don’t believe in this and I don’t recognize that; I find this superfluous and that unnecessary, and that one is strange or funny…” Another manifestation of such a pride is the desire to accuse and teach others. At the same time, the instructions of others are considered dull and obvious.

Hearing about the saints, the self-contented sectarian will say: “Why should I pray to them?  They are the same kind of people as others; it is enough to turn to God alone.” He is forgetting that the Lord Jesus Christ helped people many times on the request of their relatives and friends (John 4:46-53, Matt.15:21-28, Mark 2:2-12, Matt.8:5-13, 1 John 5:14). He thus encourages us to love and take care of each other. The saints are our “elder brothers” who intercede before God on our part (Rev. 5:8).

The pride of a religious person is also obvious when one does not realize his sins, and when one is taken over with pharisaic self-esteem. It is interesting to note that it can take on the most diverse and controversial forms, for example:

• The type of the Pharisee — a connoisseur of church law, a zealot of tradition, a fighter for the purity of the faith,

• The “reformer” type — an innovator, the enemy of “superstition,”

• The type of the Sadducee — a career-maker,

• The false starets (a false prophet),

• The self-enchanted preacher,

What Constitutes Gossip?

The Gossip. Painting of Nikolaos Gyzis

Strangely enough, the word ‘gossip’ originally meant ‘godparent’ and it is connected with the word ‘sibling’. It is useful to recall, because it means that gossip comes about when people are too familiar, too close to each other. I think that in the hothouse of certain tiny convert groups, where relations are too close for comfort, this can be a problem. I have not particularly come across the problem of gossip in more ‘normal’, larger parishes.

The essence of gossip is pride, the wish to feel superior to others, it is smugness, pretentiousness, self-importance. Gossip always condemns others. Here we must distinguish between ‘judging’ and ‘condemning’. We constantly have to judge – judges have to do it, parents have to do it, priests have to do it.

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