Ideas of Self-Righteousness

Question:
What should I do when the devil fights me with thoughts of self-righteousness?

Answer:
There are two basic means to combat thoughts of self-righteousness: that a person remembers his sins, and remembers the higher degrees that the saints have attained.

Remembering his sins makes him humble, broken, and ashamed, because a single sin can destroy his soul. Likewise, remembering the higher degrees that the saints reached in every virtue makes a person diminish in his own eyes if he compares himself to that level.

Also, we should attribute to the grace of God the credit for everything good that we do, and remember that self-righteousness causes grace to abandon us, so we fall… in order that we may know our weakness and return to our humility.

Therefore, you must remember the fear of falling whenever you submit to thoughts of self-righteousness, because “before a fall, the spirit is haughty.”

  An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III – in El-Keraza Magazine – Year Eight (Issue Fifty-Two), 30-12-1977.
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