Get A Life
Habitually Choosing What We Value
Considering values as the principles that guide our actions, then virtues are an abiding ability, an enduring habit (or a “habitual disposition” as is traditionally said), to choose and to act on what we value. If values provide the goals, the shape of the life for which we strive with God’s help, then virtues are the inner focus, drive, discipline, and commitment to seek them out. Knowing the theological virtues (faith, hope, love) allows us to work on our relationship with God. The cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance) guide and empower our decisions. We make our lives by what we value and by the virtues we possess.
Faith, hope, and love are called the “theological virtues” since they come from God and direct us toward a relationship with God. At a basic level, they are God’s gifts to us, given through grace. We take these gifts with the knowledge of and trust in our relationship with God in faith; with a lively expectation that we will attain the good things promised us in hope; and with hope that a friendship with God in love will direct us in our relationships with our neighbors. Each is a divine gift; and at the same time each is a virtue inasmuch as we exercise it, act out of it, and realize it consistently and habitually in our daily decisions and actions.
Prudence, justice, fortitude (or courage), and temperance are traditionally called the “cardinal” (or “hinge”) virtues. All other virtues that guide and empower our decision-making and actions are related to or flow from these four basic virtues. Prudence is the abiding ability to make good decisions—doing things like taking into account relevant rules and seeking a clear understanding of situations, options, consequences, people involved, and so forth. Justice is the enduring habit of giving to others what we owe them, beginning with basic respect and moving into the more tangible things due them. Fortitude, or courage, is the abiding ability to confront obstacles so as to realize what we value. Temperance is the habitual disposition to order, to balance, to moderate our desires according to what is truly good and what we truly value.
On one level, we can say that all the virtues that guide our actions (called moral virtues) are built up by practice, one decision and action after another. We become honest by telling one truth after another and by resisting the temptation to lie. When we fall, we pick ourselves up with the assurance of God’s forgiveness and God’s help, and we set out again to solidify our disposition to do good. When these virtues are developed in us, we find we can do the right thing with greater consistency and without the inner struggle we previously experienced.
At the same time, every good deed and every growth in virtue are, at their heart, the result of God’s grace at work in us. Even though we may feel we are expending a great deal of effort in avoiding temptation and doing good, it is really God’s grace that is doing the heavy lifting. The necessity of divine help makes clear the important connection between our own efforts to construct a life and the presence of God’s Spirit in prayer and in the sacramental life of the Church.