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Virtues make possible ease,
self-mastery and joy
in leading a morally good life.
A few thoughts on virtue
By Carolyn Humphreys
Let us begin with a mini “Jeopardy” game. The category is a rare one: virtue. 1) What is that which endures trials, bears pain, is able to wait until the time is right, and gives us stamina so we do not give up? 2) What does not pick or demand, does not have expectations of others, and helps us cope with conflict and criticism even when they seem unfair? 3) What is gentle, considerate, sympathetic, compassionate, merciful, and understanding? 4) What listens to others without interference, sees the value of others and God who dwells in them, and knows that as we listen to others we share their burdens and bring healing to them? 5) What recognizes the pain, grief, sorrow and trials of others, reaches out to them with compassion, and is willing just to be with suffering people? 6) What is neither jealous, envious or possessive, nor fearful of what others think, and is secure in knowledge that all will be well in the end? 7) What is neither boastful or puffed up, nor overbearing or given to excessive pride, reserved, unobtrusive, does not wish to be showy or the center of attention? 8) What is yielding and flexible, willing and able, does not insist on or persist in pressing for or demanding one’s own way? Here the better score would not be how many questions were answered correctly, but how well the definitions are lived within a Christian context in our daily routines.1
Anyone can live the virtues because they can exist as natural qualities or dispositions. Their strength is measured in the ordinariness of our lives. However, as Christians we have a greater challenge. Within the Christian context virtues are combined with other graces from God. As a result, our lives are in greater harmony with the gospel. A person who practices virtue because it is the reasonable thing to do is different from a person who is motivated to practice the same virtue in order to fulfill gospel teachings and walk in the footsteps of Jesus. The Christian practice of virtues keeps us rooted in God. This helps to stop us from being moved where the winds of fashion blow. We strive to live as followers of Jesus and keep our eyes focused on heaven, the goal of our labors.
When we embark on the adventures present in a virtuous life, forgiveness is of utmost importance if we are to move ahead. The letting go, which is the action that results from forgiveness, helps us to travel light. This keeps our vision clear and we communicate openly between ourselves and God. If our hearts are free of the barnacles that build up from refusing to forgive, we can hear quiet directions more distinctly, we see obscure spiritual markings more clearly. To end the day with forgiving those who might have harmed us is to begin the next morning with a fresh start and a light heart.
Each one of us has had the experience of being hurt in one way or another. During these times forgiveness can be a real life saver. One laudable reaction to hurt is to pray for the one who has hurt us. This takes a good deal of courage, since we are called to rise above our negative, subjective feelings. As an example, let us say the person who hurt us is named John. We can slowly recite the Our Father, and make a few revisions by appropriate placement of John’s name. In so doing, we remove the focus from ourselves and try to see things as Jesus would see them. “John’s Father who art in heaven. Hallowed be thy name in John. Thy kingdom come in John. Thy will be done in John, on earth just as if he were with you in heaven. Give him his daily bread and all he needs to sustain his life. Forgive John, help him to forgive others and help me to forgive him. Do not put John to the test as he is weak like the rest of us, and deliver him from evil.” It takes a great deal of grit to pray in this way, but in so doing we can visualize the person and imagine the risen Christ working within him. Yes, even those who have greatly harmed us, and those we have harmed, have redeeming qualities. With perseverance, we can learn to focus on these qualities instead of what has hurt us or the feelings that result from it. Reflective musings tell us the clouds of anger we feel towards a loved one, or anyone, can change to sunbeams of joy because forgiveness and love are stronger than anger and hate. Unnecessary heavy burdens of the mind lighten when we truly forgive and leave any retaliation to God.
The foundation stone of the Christian virtues is forgiveness. Through it we acknowledge, confront and release the negative emotions that result from being hurt. As we forgive others and ourselves, we restore our ability to love and be loved. In time we realize how our prayer, love for others and forgiveness influence each other. Indeed, if we do not forgive, we have difficulty with prayer and if we do not pray, we have difficulty with loving and being loved. As followers of Christ, we try to forgive quickly. This is not an easy task because at times we can find comfort in holding on to dark grumbles and deep grudges. However, when we look at the Crucified Christ, we realize the benefits of forgiveness are more than we could ever imagine. This spurs us on to let go of our negative thoughts.
St. Maximus, a great theologian, maintained that through Christ the Incarnate Word, human beings had received the power to practice virtue. He defined virtue as a combination of ascetic self-denial with active charity. These two practices keep the virtues operative and growing in our lives.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church gives us a closer look at virtue: “Human virtues are firm attitudes, stable dispositions, habitual perfections of intellect and will that govern our actions, order our passions and guide our conduct according to reason and faith. They make possible ease, self-mastery and joy in leading a morally good life. The virtuous man is one who freely practices the good. The moral virtues are acquired by human effort. They are the fruit and seed of morally good acts; they dispose all the powers of the human being for communion with divine love” (1804).
The theological three
All human virtues are rooted in the theological virtues of faith, hope and love which relate directly to God. They are like wings that move us to union with God in this life and continue our flight to the promised land in the next. These virtues are given to us by God, then direct us to God. They grow through the presence, power and actions of the Holy Spirit within us. As gifts from God the theological virtues must be received by the individual through an inner act of will. They give direction to our human virtues, are the foundation for our Christian activities, and the motivation for our decisions. Briefly, the theological virtues aid us to please God in all our actions. They point to goodness and emphasize its sublimity, grandeur and beauty. Consequently, infused in us by the Holy Spirit, the three theological virtues are gifts from God that help us live as true followers of Jesus by helping us do what he would do.
Faith is the way we believe in God. We profess and bear witness to faith by living as loyal disciples of Christ. Faith helps us wait in the quiet recesses of our being with attentive receptivity for whatever God has in store for us. This is not an easy thing to do. However, if we can let go of our concerns and problems for a time and turn our attention to God alone, we become available and open to what he wants us to learn. If we maintain a segment of time in which we set aside our worries, we can focus on the mysterious workings of a trusting faith. These “faith breaks” move us past the immediacy and urgency of our problems to the eternal and all-knowing presence of God. A break from heavy concentration on solutions or answers helps us realize that things can work out given time or that we are not really in as much control as we think. When we come out of our “faith break” time a few transitional minutes would allow us to calmly move back into the routine of our day. It may be helpful to record any reflections before we return to our work-a-day world. A regular practice of “faith time” should decrease our fears and doubts. This would enable us to go forward with greater trust and confidence in God with a renewed vision of life.
The virtue of hope is the way by which we place our trust in Christ’s promises and rely on the Holy Spirit for our strength. Hope keeps us from discouragement and sustains our belief in Divine Providence. Hope has endless beauty! It supports us with the knowledge that God has brought us this far by faith and will not abandon us in the future. Hope supports us during difficult times. It unexpectedly surprises us by serendipitous delights that pop up during work, leisure or prayer. When we are in our dark holes of life, hope keeps us looking up. We echo the words of Julian of Norwich “All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well,” even when the dark remains for a long time. Since temporal darkness must be experienced before eternal joy, her phrase could be taken up as a mantra of hope. No matter what happens, somehow we know that in the end all will be well!
Love animates and inspires the practice of all virtues. It can be called the most brilliant jewel in the crown of virtues, because through it we learn to love God for his own sake. Along with the bright gems of faith and hope, love helps God’s life and love grow strong within us. Augustine said: “Love is itself the fulfillment of all our works. There is the goal; that is why we run; we run towards it, and once we reach it, in it we find rest.” Love is the source of prayer and soul of the apostolate!
The cardinals
A hinge supports a door and makes it useful. Cardinal means pertaining to a hinge. Thus, the cardinal virtues, which are prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude, play a pivotal role because the human virtues are grouped around them. They provide strength beyond ourselves. The cardinal virtues are built upon our acquired good qualities. They call us to lofty goals that help us to imitate Christ, and to live and labor for the salvation of others. The cardinal virtues are called by other names (such as moral virtues) and are praised in many verses of the Bible.
Prudence has been defined as the right reason in action. It is called the charioteer of virtues because it guides other virtues by setting the rules. The prudent person discerns what is to be done or avoided in his life. Through this virtue we apply our Christian principles to the situations in which we find ourselves.
Justice is the way by which we are disposed to give God and others their rightful due. Justice towards God is called “the virtue of religion.” Justice towards neighbors disposes us to respect their rights and work towards equity between people and the common good.
Temperance moderates our appetites and balances our use of material goods. It keeps our instincts, desires and actions within honorable boundaries. It aids us in living upright lives and maintaining appropriate foresight.
Fortitude enables us to endure hardships with patience and firmness. It is consistent in the pursuit of the good by helping us to resist temptation, overcome obstacles in the Christian life and face trials, fear and persecution. Fortitude enables us to cling to all that is good and refuse to let go no matter what. We stick out our necks and risk all for God. We trust he will prevail regardless of the evils that surround us.
We must be careful as we move forward in the practice of virtue for there are some things that masquerade as virtue. When virtue is authentic our lives, as well as the lives of others, are changed for the better. When we slip out of the practice of virtue, it is easy to transfer our angry emotions to other people by kneejerk responses. We know there is no virtue in the violence and hate present in our society. If we do not focus on our own violence and hate, in thought or action, we can never change anything in ourselves or society. Yes, we need to face our negative attitudes and refrain from projecting them on to other people.
Conversely, we need not repress our interior anger, or express our frustration, pain or hurt in irresponsible ways. What is necessary is time to stop and reflect in prayer and silence. If we keep track of our emotional bursts, internal or external, and find they are frequent or hurtful, it reminds us of how far we still have to go on the path of true virtue. If we frequently fret and fume in our minds, or verbally “fly off the handle” about revenge or any other negative plans, it results in debilitating stress, clogs the spiritual arteries and indicates it is time for a reality check on virtues. Indeed, living the virtues is good for one’s health in many ways. One positive way we can sustain a regular spiritual blood flow is to leave vengeance to God.
A caution
We should be aware that our emotions and feelings can be elevated into the virtuous or degraded into vices. In the most virtuous persons there is a bit of vice, and in the most vile of persons there is a bit of virtue. Every virtue has a corresponding vice. Some examples are: faith has doubt, hope has despair, love has indifference, justice has corruption and honesty has fraud. Although virtue is found in actions that produce good, it is easier than we think to slide down the pole of a virtue into its opposing vice. We must always be on guard, for the pride of ego can easily be the grease on the pole. Sound virtue is the willingness to do something unwitnessed. We do not talk about virtuous actions, such actions speak for themselves. Thomas Merton once wrote: “Some of the most virtuous men in the world are also the bitterest and most unhappy because they have unconsciously come to believe that all their happiness depends on their being more virtuous than other men.” Here the virtues in themselves have become an end rather than a means to an end. We can practice virtue just to feel good about ourselves, but then we end up praising ourselves instead of God. We can be very devout, yet relate everything to our own spiritual preferences. It is true that the more we strive to be virtuous the more we flee from vice. However, in order for this to come to pass correctly, we must keep our eyes on God rather than on ourselves, or on our virtual measuring devices.
Go for the glow
Virtues are like polish that makes us shine brighter in order that we may reflect Jesus better. Most of the time it takes a great deal of buffing to make us bright mirrors of Christ. Sometimes our buffing comes through suffering. This is a mystery because it is uniquely personal and it connects us with the God of the unexpected. Some modern thinkers focus only on the positive, for example, good feelings, happiness, and joy. This is a grave error. It is an unreal and false presentation because it is not life. Love and joy, suffering and sadness can coexist. They reinforce and are consistent with each other. With the aid of virtues we can decrease attention on the hurting aspects of our pain. Thus we increase our awareness of the spiritual truths and beauty rooted in our hearts. Although we may lack control over what results from our particular type of suffering, we can control how we respond to it. Pain can shrink us up into a pitiful self-centeredness, or it can stretch us to a greater realization of the presence of God and of the workings of grace within ourselves and others.
A person who practices virtue within a time-honored and disciplined Christian tradition travels apart from the mainstream of a consumeristic, superficial or utilitarian society. He also travels apart from new age theories that promote the fads of the moment, a feel good mentality or a pick and choose menu of beliefs. The present day decreased emphasis on the common good and personal responsibility makes living a virtuous Christian life a continuing challenge. Christian virtues show us how we should act when we find ourselves caught in a web of politics, business practices, economics or social responsibilities that go against gospel teachings. Living a life of virtue requires positive changes in our attitudes, thoughts, words and deeds. Through these changes, we move closer to God within us. We grow in an abiding, gracious compassion towards others, especially those with whom we live and work. Living out authentic Christian virtue inspires movement of life at its most profound level. Our quest goes beyond time, space and knowledge as we know it, and continues forever into the eternal realm of God.
Someone once said the highest level of maturity is found in sanctity. To be a saint is to be radically authentic regarding who we are as sons and daughters of God. If sanctity is our primary goal, our other goals will fall into place. The practice of virtues shows the world that we were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us. A serious living out of the virtues takes place at our deepest level of being. It is directed towards a stronger fidelity to God. Authenticity depends on living a life of heroic virtue. Let us not waver in this quest. Rather, let us strive to be the saints of the new millennium.
1 1) patience, 2) humility, 3) kindness, 4) sensitivity, 5) consolation, 6) meekness, 7) modesty, 8) consideration.
Carolyn Humphreys, O.C.D.S., is a secular Discalced Carmelite. She is the author of From Ash to Fire, An Odyssey in Prayer: A Contemporary Journey Through the Interior Castle of Teresa of Avila (New City Press), and Christian Family Information Notebook (Wenzel Press). Her articles have appeared in Carmelite Digest and Caelum et Terra. Her last article is HPR appeared in August-September 1998.
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