The “Russian Priest”: on pride — Part I

  • I got to the end of “Diary of a Russ­ian Priest” a while back, which felt like I was los­ing a friend. And as far as I know there are no other writ­ings of Fr. Elchani­nov to be found — “Diary” is com­prised of frag­ments from his diary, some let­ters, out­lines of talks and an essay or two are all that’s left.

    I felt like I could eas­ily have been quot­ing things from my read­ings every day, but I thought that might get tire­some. How­ever, the last essay in the book, enti­tled “The Devil’s Strong­hold: (on pride)” had that same qual­ity of most of his writ­ings — frank, pro­found and almost shock­ingly famil­iar in both a per­sonal and gen­eral way — and so it seems like a fit­ting way to end out the “Diary” quotes.

    This is the first half of the essay. I had typed it in some time ago, which is a help, since I’m short of blog-time these days. But when I can I’ll give the other half. I thought it was well worth the effort.

    “The Devil’s Strong­hold: (on pride)”

    Isaac the Syr­ian — who knew, as no one else, the depths of the spirit of man — wrote in his forty-first Instruction:

    He who knows his own sin is higher than the man who res­ur­rects the dead by his prayers. He who has been granted the gift of see­ing him­self is supe­rior to the man who sees the angels.

    The exam­i­na­tion of the theme which we have cho­sen for our title leads pre­cisely to this self-knowledge.

    Pride, self-esteem, van­ity, to which we may add haugh­ti­ness, arro­gance, con­ceit — all these are var­i­ous aspects of one basic phe­nom­e­non: con­cen­tra­tion on self. Let us use this last phrase as a gen­eral term to cover all the sins we have just mentioned.

    Among them all, there are two which stand out: van­ity and pride. Accord­ing the the Lad­der, they are like a youth and a grown man, like seed and wheat, the begin­ning and the end.

    What are the symp­toms of this ini­tial sin of van­ity? An impa­tience of any crit­i­cism, thirst for praise, a search for easy ways, con­stant ori­en­ta­tion towards other: “What will they think?” Van­ity sees from afar the prospec­tive spec­ta­tor; it makes the angry gen­tle, the friv­o­lous seri­ous, the absent-minded atten­tive, the greedy absti­nent; and so forth. All this lasts as long as there are spectators.

    This very same ori­en­ta­tion toward a spec­ta­tor explains the sin of self-justification, which often creeps inad­ver­tendtly even into our con­fes­sion. “I have sinned as oth­ers do,” we say: “there have been only petty sins, I have killed nobody, I did not steal.” In the diaries of Count­ess Sophie Tol­stoy there is the fol­low­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic entry: “I did not know how to edu­cate my chil­dren (hav­ing mar­ried when still a young girl and after being locked up for eigh­teen years in the coun­try), and this often tor­tures me.” The main words of repen­tance are com­pletely oblit­er­ated by the self-justification in brackets.

    The demon of van­ity rejoices, writes St. John of the Lad­der, when he sees our virtues increase. “When I fast, I am vain; when I hide my sac­ri­fice and keep it secret, I am vain about my dis­cre­tion. If I dress well, I am vain, but when I change into poor clothes, I am even more vain. If I speak, I am pos­sessed by van­ity; if I observe silence, I am once more given up to van­ity. Whichever way we turn these thorns, their spikes will still point upwards.”

    Leo Tol­stoy knew well the poi­so­nous nature of van­ity. In his early diaries he harshly accuses him­self of van­ity. In one of his diaries of the eighteen-fifties he bit­terly com­plains that as soon as a good feel­ing arises spon­ta­neously in his soul, it is imme­di­ately fol­lowed by ret­ro­spec­tion, by a self-examination that is full of van­ity; and so the most pre­cious move­ments of the soul dis­ap­pear, melt­ing like snow in the sun. They melt — in other words, they die. This means that as a result of van­ity all that is best in us dies, we kill our­selves through van­ity; we replace the true, sim­ple, good life with spec­tres. The vain man rushes toward death and finds it.

    “Rarely have I seen,” writes one of our con­tem­po­rary authors, “the great silent joy of suf­fer­ing pass through human souls with­out its repul­sive fellow-traveler — a friv­o­lous and overtalk­a­tive affec­ta­tion (van­ity). What is the essence of affec­ta­tion? To my mind it is the inca­pac­ity to be. Truly speak­ing, affected peo­ple are non-existent, for they adapt them­selves to the opin­ion of other peo­ple about them. When expe­ri­enc­ing the great­est suf­fer­ings, affected peo­ple have an inher­ent ten­dency to show off these suf­fer­ings to oth­ers, for the eyes of oth­ers are for them what the lime­light is for a the­atri­cal set­ting.” (Stepun, Niko­lay Peresle­gin)

    An increas­ing van­ity breeds pride.

    Pride is exreme self-confidence, together with the rejec­tion of all that is not “mine.” It is “the demon’s strong­hold,” a “brazen wall” between our­selves and God (Abba Pimen); a hos­til­ity to God, the begin­ning of all sin, it is present in every sin. For every sin is a will­ful aban­don­ment to one’s pas­sion, a con­scious break­ing of God’s law, defi­ance of God, even though “the per­son who is sub­ject to pride is par­tic­u­larly in need of God, for men can­not save him.” (The Lad­der)

    From where does this pas­sion stem? How does it start? What does it feed on? What stages does it pass through in its devel­op­ment? By what signs can we rec­og­nize it?

    The last ques­tion is espe­cially impor­tant, for the proud man usu­ally does not see his sin. A cer­tain wise starets dur­ing con­fes­sion urged a brother not to be proud. The brother, blinded in his mind, replied: “For­give me, Father, but there is no pride in me.” The wise starets then said: “My child, what bet­ter proof could you give of your pride than this answer?”

    Cer­tainly, if a man finds it dif­fi­cult to ask for for­give­ness, if he is touchy and sus­pi­cious, if he remem­bers evil and judges oth­ers, all this is undoubt­edly a symp­tom of pride.

    Symeon the new The­olo­gian writes very well about this: “If a man suf­fers greatly in his heart when he is slighted or annoyed, it is clear that such a man bears the ancient ser­pent (pride) in his bosom. If he suf­fers offences in silence, he will ren­der this ser­prent pow­er­less and weak. But if he answers back with bit­ter­ness and speaks inso­lently, he will lend the ser­pent the strength to instill poi­son into his heart and cru­elly to devour his bowels.”

    In the Ser­mons to the Pagans of St. Athan­sius the Great we find the fol­low­ing words: “Men have fallen into self-lust, pre­fer­ring con­tem­pla­tion of self to the con­tem­pla­tion of God.” In this brief def­i­n­i­tion the very essence of pride is revealed: man, for whom the cen­ter of desire was orig­i­nally God, has turned away from Him and “fallen into self-lust,” desir­ing and lov­ing him­self more than God, pre­fer­ring con­tem­pla­tion of the Divine.

    In our life, this self-contemplation and self-lust have become our very nature and are man­i­fested, for instance, in a pow­er­ful instinct of self-preservation, in the life of the body, as well as of the spirit.

    As a malig­nant tumor often starts with a blow or with the con­tin­u­ous irri­ta­tion of a cer­tain part of the body, so the sick­ness of pride often starts either with a sud­den trauma of the soul (for instance with a great sor­row) or with a pro­longed inter­est in one­self, aris­ing from suc­cess, sat­is­fac­tion, the con­stant exer­cise of one’s talents.

    Often such a per­son is what we call “tem­pera­men­tal”: he “lets him­self go,” he is “pas­sion­ate,” tal­ented. He is a sort of spout­ing geyser, and by inces­sant activ­ity he pre­vents both God and man from approach­ing him. He is full of him­self, self-absorbed, self-entranced. He sees and feels noth­ing except his own burn­ing fire, his tal­ent which he enjoys, receiv­ing from it com­plete hap­pi­ness and sat­is­fac­tion. One can hardly do any­thing with such peo­ple, until they have exhausted them­selves, until the vol­cano is extinct. This is the dan­ger of all gifts, of all tal­ent. These qual­i­ties must be bal­anced by a full and pro­found spir­i­tual life.

    In the oppo­site con­di­tion — in the expe­ri­ence of grief — we find the same results: the per­son is “absorbed” in his grief, the sur­round­ing world becomes dim and dark for him; he can speak and think of noth­ing but his sor­row; finally he lives by it, cling­ing to it as the only thing which remains in his life, its one and only mean­ing. For there are men “who have dared to find delight even in the sense of their own humil­i­a­tion” (Dos­toyevsky, Notes from the Under­ground).

    Often this self-centeredness is devel­oped by quiet, silent, sub­mis­sive peo­ple whose per­sonal life has been frus­trated since child­hood, and this “frus­trated sub­jec­tiv­ity finds com­pen­sa­tion in an ego­cen­tric ten­dency” (Jung, Psy­cho­log­i­cal Types), which takes the most var­ied forms: sus­cep­ti­bil­ity, over-scrupulousness, coquet­tish­ness, the desire to attract atten­tion even by spread­ing and exag­ger­at­ing evil rumors about one­self, and finally a psy­chotic state of fixed ideas, per­se­cu­tion mania or mega­lo­ma­nia (Popr­ishchin in Gogol’s story The Mem­oirs of a Mad­man).

    So con­cen­tra­tion on self leads man away from the world and from God; one might say that he cuts him­self off from the com­mon stem of the uni­verse and becomes noth­ing but a shav­ing curled around empty space.


    Related posts:

    1. “The Russ­ian Priest”: On our rela­tion­ship to the state
    2. The “Russ­ian Priest”: On self-denial
    3. The “Russ­ian Priest’s” delight­ful walk
    4. Impres­sions of a priest’s funeral
    5. Change and the Church

    May 2nd, 2007 | Grace | 2 Comments |

2 Responses and Counting...

  • s-p 05.02.2007

    Has this guy been liv­ing in my head??

  • Grace

    Well, I’d be relieved if he was, because it would mean he had vacated mine. Because he must’ve been hang­ing out there for ages!

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