Homily
Beware of
PRIDE!
Introduction: In the Name of the Father, and of
the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen. Few things are more torturous
to me than laying ill on my back in bed knowing that the flock is praying to
the Lord in the Divine Liturgy without me.
Few things are more difficult to bear than to miss an opportunity to
nourish you with the Word of God. This
is the sixth year of my priesthood, and I have never had to endure that until
last Sunday! It was awful, and I missed you terribly. I thank you for your kind
reception of my brother priest who filled in for me last Sunday. So warm and fervent have been your
expressions of consolation and care during this bout with this virus that I am
almost tempted to get sick periodically just to ensure that I will be able to
hear from so many of you. I did say
“almost”. I am glad to be on the road of
recovery thanks to your prayers, and I trust with God’s help I will have the
strength now to speak to you about this most important Gospel lesson.
The Danger of Pride: I want you to imagine an
honorable man with me. He is a devout
man who greatly loves God. His pedigree
in Holy Orthodoxy is beautiful. He was
born to a pious Orthodox family, and was baptized on the “eighth day” so to
speak- that is, he was baptized as a very young child. He never knew a day of not belonging to and
living for God. He was raised in and
around the Church and her bishops and priests, and even as a young child showed
zeal for the truth of the faith. As a
man he proved himself most conscientious about keeping the laws of the Lord and
of the Church. Few were more faithful to
the Church, or served Her more. His
reputation as a pillar of the community and a man of God was firmly established
in his parish. He also was successful in
admonishing others to embrace and live the Orthodox way of life in and outside
of the Church. He, and faithful Orthodox
like him, were a scourge to the heretics and a model to all believers through
their zealous adherence to the Scriptures and teachings of
What a
pitiful sight! He had worked so hard! He
was so pious! He labored to keep the
commandments of the Lord! All to naught!
All of his fidelity, all of his piety and self-sacrifice and righteous
deeds were completely and instantly brought to nothing because they all were
covered with a scent absolutely repugnant to God’s nostrils: the scent of
pride! The man we have meditated upon,
this righteous and model Churchman, is, in truth, a description of a common
Pharisee such as we see in our Gospel lesson this morning. This Pharisee stood
in God’s presence covered in the stench of pride without even knowing it because
he was too consumed in recounting his righteous deeds and comparing himself to
less pious people. His prayer is, “God,
I thank thee that I am not like other men: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or
even like this tax-gatherer” (
It was
pride which led to the angelic catastrophe when the shining cherub grew
discontent with his most privileged position and raised himself up in rebellion
against God, and as a result was violently cast out of heaven and confined to
the lower regions. Detailing Lucifer’s
fall the Holy Prophet Isaiah recounts the devil’s thoughts, “But you said in
your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of
God, and I will sit on the mount of assembly in the recesses of the north. I
will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most
High.’ Nevertheless you will be thrust down to Sheol, to the recesses of the
pit” (Isa. 14:13-15). He lifted up his
head in pride thinking to dwell in the ‘recesses of the north’, and because of
his pride was cast down into the ‘recesses of the pit’ where he will spend
eternity buried and tortured in the bottom of the lake of fire! (Rev.
20:10).
It was this
hideous pride which entangled our first parents in a web of deceit and lost for all of the human
race the glory of the
In pride
Pharaoh resisted the Word of God and God’s messenger of deliverance, the Holy
Prophet Moses. Pharaoh lifted himself up
against God and found himself permanently swimming beneath the waters of the
In pride
Miriam spoke against her brother Moses before the Israelites on their march to
the promised land, and having spoken against God’s servant with whom he spoke
face to face she found herself a leper, as white as snow (Numbers 12:1-16).
In pride the Israelites murmured against God and the
faithful spies on the edge of the
The Holy Prophet Moses was the most humble man on
the face of the earth (Nu. 12:3). Yet in one (very ‘understandable’) act of
pride, in which he struck a rock with his staff in frustration and
self-exaltation to draw forth water miraculously instead of merely speaking to
the rock as God directed, he lost the right of access to the promised land and
was destined to die just outside in the land of Moab (Dt. 34:5).
The Philistine giant, Goliath, was seething with
pride as he exalted himself and mocked the forces of
In pride the King of Assyria, Sennacherib, attacked
King Hezekiah and the Nation of Israel, and mocked Hezekiah and boasted of his
great strength. He threatened all the
people that if they remained true to Hezekiah they would condemn themselves to
eat their own dung and drink their own urine! As a result the Lord sent a
destroying angel who killed 185,000 of the Assyrian troops in the night, and
caused Sennacherib to return to Assyria where he was soon murdered in a
political coup (2 Kings 18:1-19:37).
In pride King Nebuchadnezzar of
Such is the great evil of pride! May it always be far from us! Let us all imitate what we can from the
Pharisee and Publican. Let us keep the
commandments of the Lord like the Pharisee and avoid the lawlessness of the
Publican, and most importantly let us cover ourselves in the humility of
Publican and avoid the soul-destroying pride of the Pharisee, and so attain to
the Kingdom of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which is
possessed by the humble. For he is
opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.