“Pride and avarice mean the drive of energy set towards ourselves and our possessions. Lust and gluttony love too much. Sloth and envy love to little. They all turn up in our relation to the things God gives us to deal with–family, friends, work, and the practice of religion. As we wake up more towards spiritual reality and our world grows, the form of our sinfulness probably changes. The great wrong instincts of self-importance, pugnacity, grab, self-indulgence, slackness, are still there, but gradually pass from cruder to more and more subtle forms–spiritual pride, spiritual envy, spiritual greed: these still lie in wait for souls who believe they want nothing but God.”
Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941) in “The Mount of Purification” as recounted in Lent with Evelyn Underhill, ed. by G.P. Malice Belshaw (Harrisburg: Morehouse, 1990) 57.
By week three of Lent we are realizing that the disciplines draw our attention to deeper spiritual realities. Few grasped these in the first half of the 20th century like Evelyn Underhill. In “The Mount of Purification” she points the way to overcoming the seven deadly sins (cf. Proverbs 6:16-19).
For Underhill, thanksgiving turns pride into humility; sacrifice transforms anger into tranquility; communion replaces envy with charity; commemoration overtakes avarice with generosity; and mystery is when detachment reigns over greed. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Romans 12:21
As we reorient our physical desires in fasting and redirect our perspective toward others in giving and reflect on our experiences in prayer during Lent we realize the “more subtle forms” these sins can take in our lives. May the Holy Spirit help us avoid “more subtle forms” as together we seek nothing but God.