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| (St. Francis de Sales) |
“No one valued humility more highly than St. Francis de Sales, who claimed that it ‘drives away Satan and keeps the graces and gifts of the Holy Spirit safe within us.’ Yet he found that it is a very elusive virtue. You may pray and pray for humility, and strive to live this virtue, and finally say, ‘At last I am humble’ — and then you have lost it. Francis wrote, ‘Professions of humility are the very cream, the very essence of pride; the really humble person wishes to be, and not to appear so. Humility is timorous, and starts at her shadow; and so delicate that if she hears her name pronounced it endangers her existence.’ In contrast, he declared, pride is so pervasive that it ‘dies twenty minutes after death.’ Even displeasure at our own behavior can be a matter of pride. ‘Fits of anger, vexation, and bitterness against ourselves tend to pride and they spring from no other source than self-love, which is disturbed and upset at seeing that it is imperfect.’”
~Thomas Morrow
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