Reading Mother Teresa -- Pride

Pride brings a person low, 

but the lowly in spirit gain honor. 

Proverbs 29:23

A famous 16th century woodcut by Pieter Brueghel, one of a series based on the Seven Deadly Sins, features mirrors, lots of them, because the moral of story is all about pride. Ours. 

Human pride is often considered the first of what are traditionally called “the Seven Deadlies.” Up front in the old Brueghel print is a woman admiring her reflection while simultaneously clutching something resembling a knife in her other hand. There is a monster in the center foreground who is so taken with himself that he admires even his nether parts. Yet another appallingly grotesque monster – human face, claw-like arms, and extended wings like a cicada-killing wasp – licks his chops delectably at his own image, offered to him by a strange nun-like woman who is gesturing magnanimously, her robe barely covering a reptilian tail.

There’s more to the woodcut – believe me. 

But then, I suppose, there’s no end to the extent of human pride in all of us, pride that bowled over Eve first, then Adam, both of whom wanted more, despite the heavenly garden.

The English language has a thousand synonyms for pride, it seems. Lordly – see it? Or even more exotic, baronial. To be proud is to be high-minded, high-mettled, high-handed, high-plumed, high-flown, or high-toned. There’s arrogance, audacity, aloofness – and we say of some overbearing prigs that they’re “putting on airs.” What we feel when we’re around them is contempt, disdain in the sheer insolence of their pomposity. Lots and lots of words.

I’ve said enough. The fact is, pride belongs not to them, to others, but to us, to all of us. The human condition, life after the fall, makes the cardinal rule of the Christian life – to love others more than we love ourselves – nigh unto impossible.

When her immediate superiors, one after another, gave Mother Teresa permission to leave the convent and follow Jesus’ own voice in the slums of Calcutta, she was left with one more petition – to the Holy See. This is how she wrote Y.E. (Your Eminence):

In all sincerity I admit that I possess no virtue and have no merit; it is a mystery to me how the Good God wants this from poor me. All these years of my religious life, I have been quite happy as a member of the Institute of the Bl. V.M. [Blessed Virgin Mary] and the thought of leaving it breaks my heart. Why Almighty God calls me now to this new life I do not know, but I want to do only His Holy Will without any reserve, whatever the cost be. (116)

I admit it. I find such abject humility hard to believe. We are – all of us – such bloody victims of pride that believing someone could actually expunge the most deeply-embedded sin of human mind and soul is almost beyond me.

But it’s worth noting that believing Mother Teresa’s selflessness was the required first step in the judgments made by each one of her superiors, from her mentor to the Holy See. They had to believe that there was no ego in her vision, no pride in the peculiar mission she was convinced she had been directed to by the very voice of Jesus.

And, not without some lingering doubts, not without some hesitation, they did believe her.

Along with her letter to the Holy See was a cover letter from the archbishop, who wrote a kind of recommendation for her and her unique petition. Among other things, he wrote, “I believe her to be,” he said, “very mortified and very generous” (117).

Mortified – isn’t that a ridiculous word? It’s almost impossible for me to believe that anyone today would ever use that word to recommend someone else – “mortified.”

Here’s the rub. That descriptor, I’m sure, is probably exactly what the Holy See wanted to read. What’s more, if you believe your Bible, it’s what God wants – our mortification, the death of the old man of sin. Be ye mortified, the Bible might well say. Be ye mortified.

What He God wants is impossible, isn’t it? Humanly impossible, given our arrogance.

By grace alone.