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What is it that impedes this humility, this 'true godliness'? It is pride. Pride is the capital sin that leads to 'false godliness'. Pride encourages one, even perhaps in very trivial matters, to follow the subtle prompting which Satan made to our first parents: 'your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil'. Elsewhere in the Scriptures we read that 'the beginning of the pride of man is to draw away from God'. Indeed this vice, once it has taken root, infects a man's entire way of life, until it becomes what St John calls superbia vitae, the pride of life.

Pride? About what? Sacred Scripture finds both tragic and comic expressions to stigmatise pride: Why are you so proud, you who are but dust and ashes? Even in life, you are vomiting your entrails. A slight illness: the doctor smiles. The king that reigns today will be dead tomorrow.

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