Friends, welcome to Word on Fire Catholic Ministries.

Word on Fire is an apostolate dedicated to the mission of evangelization,

using media both old and new to share the faith on every continent

and to facilitate an encounter with Christ and His Church.

The efforts of Word on Fire engage the culture and bring the transformative power of God's

word where it is most needed.

Today, we invite you to join Bishop Robert Barron as he preaches the gospel and shares

the warmth and light of Christ with each one of us.

Peace be with you. Friends, for this 22nd Sunday of ordinary time, I want to talk to you about a very, very important theme, namely the theme of pride and its antidote.

Now, I say very important because I don't know a spiritual teacher who doesn't say the fundamental problem we have is pride.

And of course, they're getting this from the great biblical witness.

What goes wrong with us?

Well, the most serious of the deadly sins, the capital of the capital sins, is recognized universally

by the spiritual teachers as pride. Now, I know we tend to say, oh, it's lust. We tend to associate

sexual sin with the, you know, supreme problem. Don't write me letters. Lust is a deadly sin. Sexual

sin is a serious problem. Don't get me wrong. But there's not one spiritual teacher that would say

lust or sexual sin is the highest. No, no, the highest one, the most deadly one, is pride.

So the Bible talks about it a lot. Well, what is pride? My go-to man, usually is Thomas Aquinas.

He says it's inordinate or excessive self-love. So is there legitimate self-love? Sure, but an inordinate or excessive self-love. That's pride.

Augustine, I've often quoted him,

curvatus insay, when you're caved in around yourself. That's the attitude of pride.

I'd put it this way maybe. It's an attitude that prevents us from real contact with reality.

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