`Geronda, who has pride always tells the good he does?`
`If he says it or not he boasts with it anyway in secret. These days someone came to see me. He spoke to me all the time about himself and added without cease: `I say these to the glory of God.`
Then I told him gently: `Isn`t it included in this your own glory too ?`
`No, everything is for the glory of God` he said. In the end I saw that he had not come to tell me something concerning him, but to relate to me his great deeds to the glory of God.`
But in reality he said everything to his own glory.
In any case when the man boasts about the good he does and is proud about that he loses it for ever. He tires himself in vain and he condemns himself. One who had to become priest went to a solitary monastery stay there for forty days before his ordination. But in the 38th day it occurred something and he had to leave the place and go back in the world. Then he did everything he could to go back and stay two more days in the monastery, otherwise how could they say that he had stayed for forty days in seclusion before his ordination?
See that Moses too stayed for forty days on Sinai before receiving the ten commandments [1]!… The he said it everywhere: `Before my ordination, I stayed in seclusion for forty days.` But I wonder this is how the Grace comes? He would have received much more Grace if he had stayed for thousand times for twenty days or fifteen or no day at all, instead of boasting for staying for forty days
`Geronda, Saint Paul the Apostle says: ` Whoever brags must brag about what the Lord has done.`[2]. Is this brag out of pride?
`No, how to be out of pride? It is praise for the glory of God, thankfulness to God. If we consider a great honor and blessing the fact that Good God made us Christians this praise is not out of pride. Let us say that somebody considers a blessing and is glad that God gave him good and pious parents, this doesn`t mean that he boasts in the worldly way, only that he has gratitude for God
[1] see the Exodus 34, 28.
[2] I Corinthians 1, 31. See also Romans 5, 11; Philippians 3, 3.
Excerpt from Passions and virtues – Pious Paisios the Athonite, Evanghelismos Publishing.
