Humility and Pride

“The ability to see anything clearly, [St. Thomas Aquinas] tells us, is connected to the presence or absence of humility. If we have humility, our eyes are opened to the presence of wonder. It is wonder that enables us to contemplate the reality of things so that we can orient ourselves in relation to others, in the light of reality. Such contemplation leads to the gift of dilatatio, the dilation of the soul so that it is open to the reception of the fullness of reality, recognizing its place within it. On the other hand, the presence of pride, which should be properly understood as the absence of humility, closes the eyes to wonder, blinding us to any possible contemplation of the real, contracting the soul so that it gollumizes itself into a shriveled self-centered parody of what it is meant to be and called to be.”

~Joseph Pearce