faith formation: What is Love? Love is Not Proud post 5

 

We are continuing our meditation on St. Paul's definition of Love. We have covered patience, and tackled kindness ; we thought about envy. and consider boastfulness. Not let us look at pride.


1 Corinthians 13:4-7

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."


We could write a whole book on the topic of pride, and many have. We just want to take a brief look to help us love better.

St. Chrysostom says pride is a disease:

“...whoever is inflamed and puffed up, he must be the diseased one; for he is swollen above the proportion of the rest.” https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/220112.htm

Other translations say instead of “not proud” that love is “not puffed up." Pride is a spiritual illness.
It inflames the imagination and makes us live in an illusion. True love will cure us of this. Because love is other minded, living in reality and pride is selfish, living in an illusion.

The more we pray, act, and empathize with others the less time we have to think of ourselves.  

Pride is the source of all sin and the opposite of love. We sin when we are caught up by ourselves. We have an instinct of self survival and this is a good thing. Like in the airplane we need to put on our face mask for air first to help others, but notice the intention-- to help others.

We don't try to take all the face masks of air for ourselves, just in case the one we are using isn't as good. We seek to be healthy to help the other. So we do need to take care of ourselves. But pride is an imbalance of this.

A proud person is easily angered. They will act like a child with tantrums for not getting their way. When we are angered, notice it is usually pride. We should act against this. Pray for those who hurt us; do good to them that we perceive wronged us. Also cast doubt on our “rightness.” What was their perspective of the dispute? I could have been wrong, or I could have approached it in a better manner, with more charity.

Love is humble, since it is not proud. A parent is not embarrassed to speak "baby talk" to an infant. To play with a child is not undignified but an expression of love.

Do we try to bring ourselves to be interested in the things our loved one loves? Obviously it should be wholesome, but do we respect their interests to at least listen to them and see why they love it so much? Or even help them with their hobby. Interest makes all things beautiful. Are we interested in the one we love? If we say we love God do we seek to know Him better in prayer, or scripture or through  the saints? Are we really interested in God ? Do we really love Him?

Sirach 10:12 says that: “The beginning of man’s pride is to depart from the Lord.”

This happens when a man does not want to worship God and be disposed to his providence. This opposes trustful love.

Jesus didn't think being humiliated and spat upon and crucified between two criminals was embarrassing, to Him it was GLORY! Why? because he was interested in us (the loved ones), our well being. We would all go to hell without Him.

Let us humble ourselves and love others so we can love God.

Next we will consider dishonoring others.