Beg God for the Cure to Pride

Handmaid Leah, at Christ is in our Midst! has posted a wonderful wisdom story from one of the elders. It suggests that, like Job, we need to see the root of our sins which will explain why the Lord allows us to be afflicted and that for which we truly need to pray. The elder also builds on the early church fathers, who said that pride was the heart of the first and ancestral sin.

Here is the story:

Someone asked the Elder: “Why is it that, when I pray for a friend of mine or to be freed of a passion, sometimes God hears me and sometimes He doesn’t, even though I struggle more in prayer?”

He replied: “God examines more how much humility we have rather than how much effort we put forth. What does it profit us if we beseech God to remedy our falls and He hears us and heals us of them if we have pride, which brings about our falls? For this reason, the Good God does not listen to us, for it may be that our many falls will bring us to our senses so as to become humble. Therefore, when He does not heal us of our passion, we must realize that pride exists, and we must beg Him to cure us of our pride; then everything else departs of itself.”