Volume I, Treatise III, Chapter III

How Prejudicial Vainglory Is

THE prejudice we receive from vainglory is sufficiently explained to us in the gospel, by the Son of God, when he tells us: “Take care not to perform your actions before men, to the end they may ‘take notice of you: otherwise you will have no recompense for them from your heavenly Father.” (Matthew 6:1) Do not as hypocrites are wont to do, who perform nothing but to be seen by others, and to gain their esteem. “In truth I tell you, these have already received their reward.” (Matt: vi. 5.) You have a desire to gain reputation—this is the motive of your actions, and will also be their reward; but take notice that you must expect no other reward than this. Unhappy are you, who have already received your wages, and for whom there remains nothing else to be hoped for. ‘The hope of the hypocrite shall perish,” says holy Job, “and his folly shall afford him but little satisfaction.” (Job 8:13,14) And St. Gregory, explaining this passage, says, that ‘what the hypocrite hopes for, is the esteem and praise of men, and that all] this ends with his life” The saint adds, “that he who by his virtuous actions would gain the applause of-the world, resigns at a low rate a thing of great value. And when he might thereby have purchased the kingdom of heaven, he seeks to gain nothing but the transient reward of human applause.” (Greg. lib. viii. Mor. c. 13.) What greater abuse can happen than this, and what greater folly can one imagine, than to have taken a great deal of pains, and to have performed many good actions, and yet to find his hands empty in the end? It is this the prophet Agyzus gives us to understand when he says, “Reflect upon your own conduct. You have sown much, and have reaped but little: you have eaten, and you have not been at all satisfied: you have drank, but you have not quenched your thirst;” you have clothed yourselves, and you are not warm: and he who has gathered together the greatest reward, has put it into a sack full of holes,” which another text calls, “a bushel full of chinks.” (Ag. i. 5,6.) Behold what vainglory does, It puts all things in a bag full of holes; for what enters at one end goes out at the other: it puts all into a vessel full of chinks; because what is cast into it, runs through the moment it is cast in; and it gains nothing but what it presently loses. ‘“Wherefore do you lay out your money, and buy not bread,” says the prophet Isaiah, “and why do you take pains and not satiate yourselves?” (Isa. lv. 2.) Since you take so much pains to do the thing, do it after such a manner as to profit by it, that you may not lose all the fruit of your labours.

St. Basil enumerates three sorts of evils, which vainglory inflicts on us. The first is, to make us destroy our body by great labour, watchings, and by what is most painful in good actions. The second is, to corrupt or destroy all the merit of our actions, after they are done, and to make us lose all the advantage we might expect from them. This vice, says he, does not hinder us from working, because it would not be so hard for us to be frustrated of our recompense, if we had not laboured at all; but it waits till we have taken pains to perform many good works, and afterwards it robs us of them, and takes the profit of them from us. It is like a pirate, says he, that attacks not a vessel which is sailing out of port to purchase goods, but waits till it returns home richly freighted, and then fails not to set upon it. But vainglory does still worse—it inflicts on us a third evil, by turning good into bad, and virtue into vice, through the vanity of the miserable end we propose to ourselves; hence instead of the recompense due to us, it causes us to merit nothing

else than chastisements and punishments. In such sort, that we reap bad fruit from good seed; and what should elevate and raise us to heaven, serves only to precipitate us more deeply into hell. Moreover, vainglory does all these things in so sweet and quiet a manner, that we are so far from troubling ourselves at the loss of all these good works, that on the contrary, we even take pleasure in these our losses. And say what you will to a man guilty of this vice—muke his losses ever so evident to him, yet he will still yield so far to the desire of human praise and glory, that one would think there were some charm or enchant; ment in it. It is for this reason that St. Basil called vainglory “A charming thief that robs us of all our good and spiritual actions; a mild and peaceful enemy of our souls. And it is.” ’ says he, “by this sweet insinuating flattery, that it attracts and deceives such a multitude of people. For human praise and glory is a thing very sweet and pleasant to such persons as know not what it is.” ‘ Take heed of the arrow,” says St. Bernard; ‘‘it flies silently, penetrates as silently, but I assure you it inflicts a wound hard to be cured, and kills upon a sudden: and this arrow is indeed nothing else than vainglory.” It is a sweet scented powder, but it is entirely composed of arsenic.

We read in the Life of St. Pachomius, that conversing one night in his monastery with some other ancient fathers, one of his religious carried two little mats he had made that day, and laid them close by his cell, over against the place where the saint was sitting; imagining that when the saint should see them, he would praise his diligence, for having made two mats in one day, when the rule obliged to make only one. The saint readily perceived that it was done through a spirit of vanity, wherefore addressing himself to the fathers that were with him, “Behold,” says he, heaving a deep sigh, “what pains this brother has taken from morning till night, to offer up in the end all his labour to the devil; having preferred the esteem of men to the glory of God?” And afterwards calling him, he gave him a severe reprimand, and ordered him, for his penance, that when all the religions were assembled to make their prayer, he should go with these two mats about him, and with a loud voice tell them, “My dear fathers and brothers, I beg of you all, for the love of God, to pray to our Lord, that he will have mercy upon me, a most miserable sinner, who have more esteemed these two little mats than the kingdom of heaven.” Moreover, he commanded him, that when the religious went to eat, he should go into the refectory in the same garb, and stand in the middle of it the whole time of dinner. But the penance ended not here, for he caused him to be imprisoned five whole months in a cell, and to fast on bread and water: he also ordered that none should visit him, and obliged him to make two mats every day. This example, besides the instruction on the present subject which we ought to derive from it, serves likewise to show us what severe penances the ancient fathers inflicted for very light and small faults; and how great was the humility and patience of their subjects, to submit to and undergo such severe penances imposed on them.

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