Caput XIV
Pride as the Mother of All Vices
Odo opens by asking why most people cannot resist vices, and answers with the Psalmist: pride is the mother of all vices and the cause of every fall into iniquity.
Why is it, then, that most people can't resist vices or stand against them? The Psalmist, when asked, points to the reason. As though concerned with the mother of all vices alone, he says: Let the foot of pride come upon me (Ps. 35:12). And that pride itself is the cause and occasion of all ruin, he makes clear by adding: In the same place, They have fallen in pride, who work iniquity (Ps. 35:13).
The Elect Taught Between Beast and Bird
Drawing on Job, Odo describes how the elect, taught by God, avoid both the beastly collapse of fleshly lust and the birdlike soaring of spiritual pride, keeping spirit rightly ordered under the Lord.
Whoever works iniquity outwardly has first collapsed inwardly through pride. Against this, the elect speak of God: Who teaches us more than the beasts of the earth, and instructs us more than the birds of the sky (Job 35:11). For clearly, while they reflect by His inspiration on what they truly are, neither does the frailty of the flesh cast them down like beasts of burden, nor does the spirit in pride lift them up like birds.✦ Whoever slips in the flesh into lust is laid low like a beast of burden; whoever is lifted up in mind, seeking lofty things, soars like a bird. For if the spirit is devoutly pressed down under the Lord, as was said above, the flesh is not unlawfully raised up above the spirit.
The Bitter Fruit of Elation
Odo traces the causal chain: pride toward the Creator brings contempt from one's own flesh, lust is born from the root of elation, and the soul falls like a beast or soars beyond its measure like a bird.
Because if that person despises his Creator through pride, he rightly deserves to be despised by his own subject flesh. So the poison of lust is born from the root and from the desert of elation. Since this is so, the soul falls into lust like a beast of burden through the origin of sin, when in its pride it raises itself beyond what it ought, like a bird.✦
When the Standing Fall and the Fallen Cannot Rise
Odo warns that pride's double danger is that it topples even the seemingly steadfast and prevents the fallen from rising, illustrated by the shocking corruption of long-kept continence and virginity in old age.
This is why either the one who seemed to be standing falls, or the one who has fallen cannot rise again. This is why long-kept continence is suddenly broken, and why virginity is often corrupted in old age. Is this really what elation should produce — that those who exalt themselves in pride before the eyes of God should be cast down outside to the likeness of beasts of burden?
Humble Yourselves Under God's Mighty Hand
Odo concludes with a direct exhortation: the one who wishes to resist all vices must humble themselves under the mighty hand of God.
Whoever therefore desires to resist vices, let that person be humbled under the mighty hand of God.✦
Read the original Latin
Quid autem sit, quod plerique nec resistendo vitiis contraire possunt, Psalmista requisitus insinuat, nam quasi de sola matre vitiorum sollicitus ait: Veniat mihi pes superbiae (Psal. XXXV, 12). Et quod ipsa totius ruinae causa et occasio sit subdendo manifestat, dicens ibi idem: In superbia ceciderunt, qui operantur iniquitatem (Psal. XXXV, 13). Qui igitur operatur iniquitatem foris, prius per superbiam corruit intus. Quo contra electi de Deo dicunt: Qui docet nos super jumenta, et super volucres coeli erudit nos (Job XXXV, 11), quia videlicet dum eo inspirante cogitant quid sunt, nec eos fragilitas carnis velut jumenta dejicit, nec in superbia spiritus quasi volucres elevat. Qui enim carne labitur in luxuriam, more jumenti prosternitur: qui mente extollitur, quasi alta petit ut avis. Si enim pie spiritus sub Domino premitur, ut supra dictum, illicite caro super spiritum non elevatur.
Quod si ille auctorem superbiendo contemnit, jure et a subdita carne contemnetur. Ergo virus libidinis de radice, et de merito nascitur elationis. Quod cum ita sit, tunc anima per originem culpae more jumentorum in luxuriam cadit, cum superbiendo more volucrum ultra quod debuit elevat. Hinc est enim quod vel is qui stare videbatur cadit, vel is qui lapsus est, resurgere nequit. Hinc est itaque quod longa continentia repente solvitur, et plerumque virginitas in senili aetate vitiatur. Sic elatio nimirum debet fieri: ut qui se superbiendo ante oculos Dei extollunt, usque ad jumentorum similitudinem foris devolvantur? Qui ergo vitiis resistere cupit, sub potenti manu Dei humilietur.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Job.35.11 — who teaches us more than the beasts of the earth and makes us wiser than the birds of the heavens
- ↩Job.35.11 — who teaches us more than the beasts of the earth and makes us wiser than the birds of the heavens
- ↩1Pet.5.6 — Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time.
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