From the 6th to the 12th century, when the Church was seeking consistency in teaching and other matters of faith, it developed the Penitentials. These were specifically designed for confession. They outlined all the various sins and prescribed the appropriate penance. A few examples: “He who steals from a church shall do penance for one year; if from a layman, forty days,” “He who destroys another by slander shall fast seven days,” and “If a monk is drunk, he shall fast for three days on bread and water”—depending on how drunk the monk was, that may be more of a blessing than penance.
From these and other teachings that emerged, such as those from the Puritans and the Holiness Movement, many came to believe that the Church’s primary function was to tell people, “Thou shalt not,” “Don’t do this or that,” or, more simply, “No!” while wagging the finger.
The question might be, “Why did the Church go down this path?” There are long, complicated answers, but perhaps the most charitable is that the Church sought to help people live virtuous lives, lives that were holy and righteous in the eyes of God. That is not a bad thing. In fact, it is a very good thing; however, along the way, as with many good things, it was hijacked, and the desire to help people was transformed into a desire to control and manipulate them. At that point, the idea of living a virtuous life became a matter of ridicule and scorn. Elizabeth Taylor said, “The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they’re going to have some pretty annoying virtues.” And, speaking of a political rival, Winston Churchill wrote, “He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”
In his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton wrote, “The word virtue: what a fate it has had in the last three hundred years! The fact that it is nowhere near so despised and ridiculed in Latin countries is a testimony to the fact that it suffered mostly from the mangling it underwent at the hands of Calvinists and Puritans. In our own days, the word leaves on the lips of cynical high-school children a kind of flippant smear, and it is exploited in theaters for the possibilities it offers for lewd and cheesy sarcasm. Everybody makes fun of virtue, which now has, as its primary meaning, an affectation of prudery practiced by hypocrites and the impotent—that is, those who rely on a holier-than-thou approach instead of actually living the call of the virtues.”
I tell you all this because, during this Season of Lent, I don’t want to stand up here and say, “Thou shalt not” or “Don’t do that.” Instead, I would like to walk us through a study of the Seven Heavenly Virtues. Why? Because a virtuous life is really not boring or something to laugh at. Concerning such a life, Merton went on to say, “I was never a lover of Puritanism. Now, at last I came around to the sane conception of virtue-without which there can be no happiness, because virtues are precisely the powers by which we can come to acquire happiness: without them, there can be no joy, because they are the habits which coordinate and canalize—channel—our natural energies and direct them to the harmony and perfection and balance, the unity of our nature with itself and with God, which must, in the end, constitute our everlasting peace.” (The Seven Storey Mountain, p.203)
This Lent, let’s see if he is correct. Let’s see if we can discover happiness and everlasting peace in living a virtuous life.
To begin, where do the Seven Heavenly Virtues come from, and what are they? You might think they originated with the Church, but that is only partially true.
Writing in the first century, the Roman philosopher Cicero used the term “Cardinal Virtues” to identify the four virtues that Plato had already codified some five centuries earlier. The word “cardinal,” in this context, means hinge. According to the philosopher, the virtuous life hinges on or pivots around the observation of the four Cardinal Virtues.
The first of these virtues is prudence or wisdom, which is the combination of knowledge, discernment, and right action. Second is justice, seeking the harmony and peace of the whole society. Third is fortitude or courage, grounded in internal strength, and fourth is temperance or self-control.
Later, Christian writers such as Thomas Aquinas would define these virtues from a Christian perspective. Through this lens, prudence is the discernment of God’s will and the acting accordingly; justice is the application of “love your neighbor as you love yourself,” without asking who your neighbor is; fortitude is the courage to face trials and evil without wavering; and, finally, temperance is moderation or balance.
These four Cardinal Virtues provide us with the first of the seven Heavenly Virtues. The remaining three are the Theological Virtues, and, as the name implies, they come to us through Holy Scripture. I suspect many of you know the verse from St. Paul’s definition of love in his first letter to the Corinthians—“So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13).
Faith, hope, and love—we’ll look at them more closely in the coming weeks, but for now, faith gives us the grace to see the path that leads to God, hope is the grace to desire God, and love is the grace that enables us to participate in a life with God.
By combining the Cardinal Virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance with the Theological Virtues of faith, hope, and love, we arrive at the seven Heavenly Virtues. However, before we can practice any of these, one other element is required. It can be considered a virtue in itself, but it is the root of all the others—humility. Humility is the grace God gives us, enabling us to know who we are and who God is (without confusing the two), combined with the ability to have a relationship with others without the involvement of ego or destructive self-criticism. Humility is about peacefully knowing our place.
Marcus Aurelius, considered one of the Five Good Roman Emperors, ruled the Empire in the late second century. In his personal journal, he wrote to himself, “Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.” Grounded in humility, my prayer is that over the course of this Season of Lent, we will learn more about and begin to put into practice these Heavenly Virtues so that we can do just that and attain the true happiness and everlasting peace that Merton speaks of.
Let us pray: God, our Father, You redeemed us and made us Your children in Christ. Through Him, You have saved us from death and given us Your Divine life of grace. By becoming more like Jesus on earth, may we come to share His glory in Heaven. Give us the peace of Your kingdom, which this world does not give. By Your loving care, protect the good You have given us. Open my eyes to the wonders of Your Love that we may serve You with a willing heart. Amen.
Candle in a Cave 