Monday Morning Meditation #47: Pride Goeth Before a Fall

Happy Fourth, er Fifth, of July! This week I contained to read in Chronicles about king after king. Many of them started out dedicated to God, but nearly all fell by the wayside, principally because of one trait: pride. Having one some battles with God's help, or having become wealthy or powerful, they became arrogant and full of pride. They not only lost God's help, but also they ultimately fell to His ire, dying in a couple of cases of a painful disease. Uzziah, Chapter 26, is a representative example. God afflicted him with leprosy as a result of his arrogance and presumption that apppeared after he had become powerful, successful, and a winner of battles:

16 But after Uzziah became powerful, his pride led to his downfall. He was unfaithful to the LORD his God, and entered the temple of the LORD to burn incense on the altar of incense.
17 Azariah the priest with eighty other courageous priests of the LORD followed him in.
18 They confronted him and said, "It is not right for you, Uzziah, to burn incense to the LORD. That is for the priests, the descendants of Aaron, who have been consecrated to burn incense. Leave the sanctuary, for you have been unfaithful; and you will not be honored by the LORD God."

After being afflicted with leprosy, Uzziah had to spend the rest of his life isolated. His reigning days were over.

Reading: 2 Chronicles 26.

Meditation: The first thought as I read through these chapters was how similar all these kings were. Clearly, they did not learn from each other (or from the priests and prophets who were sent to them).

The second thought as I read through these chapters was how foolish all these kings were. Clearly, they did not learn from history.

The third thought as I read through these chapters was how blind mankind is. We, too, fail to learn from history or from the priests and prophets sent to us. As I read about King Uzziah's actions in the temple but think of the story of St. Oswald, who arrogantly demanded the priest's larger host only to have it turn to blood and find himself sinking into the ground. I blogged about that remarkable story back when I was visiting Seefeld, Austria, where the Church of St. Oswald is located -- one can still see the indentations his fingers made in the table which turned to wax when he tried to save himself by grabbing onto it. The whole story is rather interesting, and rather than repeat it all here, I will send you back to that particular post: Falling in Love with Some Special Churches.

Pride -- it really does us little good, so why do we cling to it? So little of what we are proud of comes from ourselves. Talents come from God; skills that we develop usually come from teachers, mentors, parents; power is usually granted to us by others. So, where do we come off being proud? Yet, it is truly difficult to find people without a large helping of pride. Often as not, it does not satiate because we cannot satiate ourselves, and God does not come to us in our proud moments. God comes to us in our humble moments.

Contemplation: That is far as I can go with you this Monday morning. I must retire to private prayer to thank God for coming to me at all, given my proud moments, to praise Him for the ways in which He teaches me humility, to repent for any times I have pride in self rather than pride in God, and to ask Him to help me develop the much greater humility that I need. Now I retire to spend as much time as I can in contemplation, my favorite part of the day, letting God take over the direction in which my relationship with Him moves.

I will leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts. (During the week, he also posts great homilies and other thoughtful discussions. I enjoy reading those, too.)


For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the sidebar of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.