That Pride Is the Cause of Our Not Taking Correction Well

ONE of the things in which man’s great pride is best seen is the great difficulty with which he takes correction and warning of his faults, a difficulty so great that you will hardly find anyone willing to accept such correction and warning. St. Augustine says very well: “Who shall easily find a man willing to be reproved? And where shall we find that wise man, of whom it is said in Proverbs (ix. 8): Rebuke a wise man, and he will love thee?” Know for certain that he is a wise man, since he knows how to receive lovingly so great a benefit as is that of correction; but where are such wise men to be found? Who is he, and we wiil praise him (Ecclus. xxxi. 9). St. Gregory says: “We are so full of pride, and it is so rooted in our hearts, that we cannot bear to hear our faults told, nor brook reprehension, because we take it to be an injury to our character and a disparagement of what we are worth. That touches us to the quick, as a thing affecting our honor, and we at once resent it, and instead of being grateful we make a grievance of it, and fancy we are being wronged and persecuted.” So some speak out clearly; when they are corrected and admonished repeatedly of their defects, they say that they are being persecuted and spitefully treated. There are besides, says the saint, some who acknowledge and tell their faults willingly; but when others tell them of them and find fault with them, they at once get excited, defend and excuse themselves, because they cannot brook being rated at that. These people are not humble, and do not tell their faults with true knowledge of what they are. If they were humble, and reckoned themselves to be in fault, and said such things feeling what they said, they would not so much resent others’ saying it to them, nor excuse and defend themselves at such length.

True humility consists in knowing yourself and making little account of yourself, and desiring that others likewise should know your faults and not make much of you. Those other people, says St. Gregory, let it clearly appear that they do not tell their faults from any desire of being made small account of, but to appear good and humble, since it is written: The just man is the first accuser of himself (Prov. Xvili. 17). You want to gain honor and pass for humble, and take the telling of your faults to be a good means to that end; that is why you tell them. But you do not think it a good means to gain honor to have another person telling you them and rebuking you; rather you take that for a thing redounding to your dishonor and discredit, and therefore you cannot stand it. Both the one and the other is pride. Hence it is that, though the man sees that what they admonish him of is true, and there is reason for saying it, nevertheless he is troubled and feels it deeply.

Thus we shall no more say: Rebuke the wise man, and he will love thee, since we no longer find nowadays these wise men who are glad to be found fault with, and take correction and admonition thankfully. What we can say today is what the same Wise Man said a little before on this subject: Beware of correcting and rebuking the scorner and the proud man, because he will hold thee in abhorrence (Prov. ix. 8), and you will make a bad job of him. That is the usual thing now, and what we commonly see in the world. Evil men love not, but rather hold in abhorrence, those who admonish them of their defects and tell them the truth. Veritas odium parit—“Truth begets hatred.” The saints liken them to patients out of their mind and mad, who will not let the doctor come near them, but shun him and resist his treatment and applications, and throw them aside, such being the grievousness of their malady and such their insensibility to the fact that they are ill. This is the comparison made by the Holy Ghost: He that hateth rebukes is a fool (Prov. xii. 1). Speaking of the man who abhors correction and admonition, I not only say that he is wanting in virtue and humility, but also that he is wanting in common sense and judgment; he is mad and off his mind, since he refuses medical treatment, and resists the physician and vents his indignation upon him who wants to come and heal him.