by Joe Cady
In one of the videos included in our “Lenten Resources” page (A Closer Look at Lent), I spoke of the 3 traditional practices of Lent and how they are given to us as a means to overcome our disordered inclination to sin, specifically, the sins of pride, lust, and greed. In this three-part series, I’d like to briefly take a closer look at each of these practices and the role they play in helping us grow in holiness.
Pride is one of the most primordial sins of humanity. In fact, many theologians have categorized the first sin of humanity as ultimately a sin of pride. This makes sense, since the Catechism says that the problem of our first parents wasn’t that they wanted to be like God (God wants that for us, he made us in his image and likeness), the problem was that they wanted to be like God “without God, before God, and not in accordance with God” (CCC 398). They wanted to snatch for themselves what could only be received as a gift; and obtain apart from God something that could only be experienced in union with God.
The problem with pride is that it involves a misunderstanding or misreading of the actual nature of things. As human beings, we are beautifully and wonderfully made… we’re pretty amazing creatures. But that’s the thing, we can’t forget that we are in fact creatures. The human person is amazing because we have a God who has made us that way. Everything starts to fall out of order when we lose sight of this fact, when we forget our creaturely status.
But in many ways, this has been our tendency from the beginning. We’re like the super robot in every sci-fi movie who reaches the point where they think they are so advance that they no longer need to be subject to the one who made them. This pride then leads to a rupture of everything else, because once we begin to understand ourselves incorrectly in relation to our Creator, our relationships with others and the world around us fall into disorder as well.
This is why humility is such a central virtue. Humility isn’t thinking that we’re terrible or constantly putting ourselves down. Rather, humility involves a clear and accurate understanding of the true reality of things. It means knowing ourselves rightly, with all our virtues and vices, our strengths and our weaknesses. Humility helps us understand our place within a vast universe and our responsibility for and dependence on others, especially our dependence on God.
And this is where prayer comes in. Prayer, by its very nature, recognizes that there is a God, and that we are dependent upon this God “to live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). When we pray, we are grounding ourselves firmly in reality. Entrusting our joys and hopes, our fears and anxieties into the hands of the God who made us and loves us. Because prayer places our mind and hearts in a posture of surrender and receptivity before God, it is a sure remedy for and defense against sin.
As we continue along in this season of Lent, I encourage you to intentionally invest more energy into your prayer life (both in terms of regularity and depth). This doesn’t mean we have to start devoting 4 hours a day to prayer, or that our prayer habits have to look a certain way. Instead, take an honest assessment of what prayer looks like in your life right now, and ask yourself what you can do to move your prayer life forward. Maybe that means setting an alarm on your phone at a certain time every day to help you remember to pray. Maybe that means turning the radio off
in the car and spending that time in prayer instead. If scripture reading isn’t a habit in your life, perhaps you could set aside 10 minutes each day letting God speak to you through his Word.
If you’re not sure what to do during your prayer time, one simple way to structure your prayer is to focus on three things: (1) prayers of thanksgiving, (2) prayers for others, and (3) prayers for yourself. This can be an easy but effective way to build the habit of prayer, letting these three questions guide your time: What do I want to thank God for? Who do I want to offer up to God in prayer? And what do I want to ask of God for my own life?
The first step to prayer is doing it. And then, as one Benedictine monk puts it, “Keep it simple, keep it honest, and keep it going.”