Puffy Pizza Dough and Pride. Saturday, March 29. Lent 2014.

Friday night pizza is a staple in our house.

I love taking the dough out early

and just seeing it grow throughout the day.

It will nearly triple in size from the original dough.

And it’s fun to poke, of course.

To which is just responds by puffing up more.

The yeast.

It’s an essential part of the dough.

It is necessary for the dough to rise,

unless, I guess, we wanted flatbread pizza.

We don’t.

So puffy, yeasty dough it is!

Montfort makes this great analogy.

“Pride is to the human being what yeast is to the dough. Both puff up and completely corrupt the element in which they reside: The sin of Adam has almost entirely spoiled and soured us, filling us with pride and corrupting every one of us, just as yeast sours, swells, and corrupts the dough in which it is placed.”

What a way to ruin pizza nights, huh?

These concepts:

humans, dough, and yeast/pride

are an interesting group.

In order for dough to rise,

it does need yeast.

In order for humans to rise,

we need something too,

just not pride.

In fact,

what we need

is to not need anything.

Montfort is constantly talking about

total dependence on God.

With this comes giving of ourselves,

trusting that God’s ways are better than our own,

deflating ourselves of our pride,

and knowing that with nothing but God Alone,

we have everything.

So next time we poke that beautiful, puffy dough,

think about deflating the pride the resides in our hearts,

and rather than our pride bouncing back,

puffier than ever,

let it deflate like a helpless balloon.

For we know that we should rid ourselves of things of this world,

and trust, hope, be, strive for, listen to, love,

God Alone.

This Lenten blog series is based upon St. Louis de Montfort's writings. Unless otherwise noted, all the phrases in quotation marks are taken from the book Jesus Living in Mary.