Christian Virtues

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

Our Lord tells us frequently in Scripture, “I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done” (John 13:15).

There are many places where Our Lord invites us to follow His example.

St. Paul says to the Philippians, “Be you like-minded with Jesus” in the same love, humility, obedience, and esteem of fellow man (Phil. 2:2).

To the Romans he said, “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom. 13:14).

And in St. Matthew, Our Lord says, “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart” (Matt. 11:29).

We're called to share the life of Christ, to live an innermost integration with Him, the vine, the stem. Our Christian life is the life of a branch of Christ (cf. John 15:5).

It's a life of union with, and for union with, Christ. It's constant growing into and growing out of Christ.

The more completely we grow into Christ, the stem, the more His holy life lives in us, radiating His spirit, His life, His virtue, and His holiness through our own life.

The more intensive and active our virtue is, the more we identify ourselves with the Stem, and so, the stronger and more powerfully the life of the Stem will flow into the branches, awakening and developing in them a life of Christian virtue.

Christian life is growth. It's a constant process of progression to higher and higher consciousness, a ceaseless urge toward unity and perfection in God's image.

When we've cleansed our heart of sin and error, when, with prayer and contrition, with the help of God's grace, we have destroyed self-love and all its essentials, the way to enlightenment is open.

We have to try and grow in that process of purification as a consequence of the gradually acquired appreciation of the supernatural and human, divine truths and values.

We become more completely convinced that “only one thing is necessary” (Luke 10:42).

The acquisition of virtue becomes more and more important. The whole goal of our Christian life can be focused on that deeper acquisition of virtue.

Day by day and week by week, Our Lord may show us in clearer ways what particular virtue He wants us to focus on this particular day or week.

“What does it profit a man that he gains the whole world but loses his own soul?” (Matt. 16:26).

We also know that purification from sin and the want of faith is not enough. The path to holiness leads us on to the development in Christian virtue, to illumination.

Christ Himself is our example and also the source of strength. We turn to Him as a flower turns to the sun. Our thoughts, our inclinations and wishes, revolve around Him.

The Book of Songs says, “Draw me; we will run after you to the odor of your ointments” (Song 1:3)—your virtue and your holiness.

We desire to be enlightened by Him, the divine sun, so that we can develop our likeness to Him, because it's to that end that God has created us, predestined us, as St. Paul said, “to be made conformable to the image of his Son” (Rom 8:29).

Natural progress in sanctifying grace that we received in Baptism demands that we should take the road of Christian virtues.

After cleansing our soul from sin, the intensive and positive application to developing the life of virtue becomes more important, in conscious imitation of Our Lord's life on earth.

God the Father said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear you him” (Matt. 17:5).

With these words, God the Father emphatically held up Christ to us, His own Son made man, as our pattern and teacher. “Hear you him.” Imitate Him. Live His life with Him.

Christ is the manifestation of God in human form. When He appears as man, He lives and acts in all things as God lives and is obliged by His nature to act.

He is God dwelling among us, showing us how we must live in order to be pleasing to God. Everything He did in His life on earth was perfect and holy, first, because of the inner love that governed His actions, and then because of the manner in which He lived.

Even His least significant act was performed divinely; it was the work of God and therefore completely pleasing to the Father. And so, all the works of Jesus are an example, a pattern of holiness for us to follow.

“I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done” (John 13:15). It's the express will of the Father that we should follow the life of Jesus and live as He lived, in imitation of all His virtues.

Christ's express will is also transmitted in those words: “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart” (Matt. 11:29).

“Put on the Lord Jesus Christ,” says St. Paul (Rom. 13:14). “Be of like-mindedness with Jesus” (Phil. 2:5).

We're encouraged to acquire Christ's virtues to such an extent that St. Paul says, “Not I, but Christ, lives in me” (Gal 2:20), lost completely in Christ's likeness, a radiation of His spirit and virtue.

The mystery of our living unity with Christ reveals to us the purpose of our striving for virtue. Virtue is the expression, the natural radiation of “our living in Christ.”

“I am the vine; you are the branches. He that lives in me and I in him, he shall bring forth much fruit” (John 15:5).

Our virtue is the measure of our life in Christ. It is also the food that nourishes that life.

Divorced from a conscious effort to acquire virtue and develop it, life in Christ and with Christ is unthinkable.

That conscious effort to acquire virtue is very important to live Christ's life with Him.

A life of virtue is not a matter of entirely free choice, but in some way, it's an inescapable duty which our integration with Christ, through Baptism, imposes upon us.

“Be you perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48).

St. Paul says, “Do you also reckon that you are dead to sin through Baptism, but alive unto God in Christ” (Rom. 6:11).

We're called to be alive to God. Every creature in the world is alive to God: the grass that grows, the trees that bloom, the flowers that bloom. They're alive to His voice. They respond to His call.

We have the capacity to be alive or not to be alive. We live for Him to the extent to which we live the life of Christ, the stem, in honest striving for virtue and with the constant growth in virtue.

That particularly includes moments of trial, of the cross, of difficulty, of contradiction, misunderstanding, failure, illness.

In striving for humility, for self-denial, for purity, for courage, for surrender to the Father, we are branches of Christ, the stem. We renew and keep alive His humility, His self-denial, His love and purity and strength.

When the baptized Christian, the branch of Christ, bows in humility, that humility is absorbed in the self-humiliation that Christ practiced on earth when He was made man, when He was subject to Mary and Joseph, when He washed the feet of the apostles.

It is His humility in which He, through us, the branches, worships and glorifies the Father.

Our poverty of spirit attaches itself to the poverty Our Lord chose in the crib, in the flight into Egypt, in Nazareth, in His life on earth when He possessed nothing and “had no place to lay His head” (Matt. 8:20).

It's His poverty that He lives again in us, condemning the avarice of the world and honoring the Father.

In the whole universe there is only One who honors the Father as He deserves; only One who perfectly prays, who humbles Himself and is completely poor in spirit, and that One is Christ.

But we are an integral part of Him. He continues to live His life of virtue in us, to the glory of the Father.

St. Augustine says, “Stem and branches are so completely one that whatever the one may be, the other is also, nor can they be separated from one another.”

To be a Christian, a branch of Christ, and not to live the virtue of Christ, the stem, is a contradiction.

Our unity with Christ, the stem, gives our Christian virtue superior value and priority over purely natural human virtue.

These are reasons for striving with all our might for that acquisition of a life of virtue. Virtue must constantly grow and increase in strength.

Supernatural life enters us as a force, a force that awakens the powers of the soul, the mind, the will, and awakens the heart to a new realization of God's light of truth and a new urge to live for God, to work for Him, to overcome, to renounce, to suffer everything for love of Him and constantly to aim at holier, more perfect works.

A new wave of life floods our being, drawing us with it; a divine power, eliciting ever more energy from the soul and raising our customary existence to an altogether higher level.

It's the nature of the Christian in us to develop and grow. There can be no standing still; whoever ceases to progress, deteriorates.

Natural virtue advances toward perfection by character building, learning, courage.

It's different with divine Christian virtue. A person may reach a high degree of efficiency and virtuosity through his own will power, through effort, diligence, and constant practice.

Divine virtue, on the other hand, can only be given by God. He raises us from the lower stages of grace and virtue to the higher grade; He makes everything clearer with His light and floods us with more divine life than we enjoyed before.

We owe our growth in virtue to God, and after, we await it patiently, seeking it from Him. God gives the increase.

He gives us three aids in fostering the growth of divine virtue. The first rests upon the sacraments, in particular, the Blessed Eucharist. They have the special function of increasing sanctifying grace in us. With this increase, divine virtues automatically grow.

The good works we do are a second aid to growth. Our works cannot, of themselves, transport us to a higher degree of divine virtue, but they can move God to increase and strengthen us.

Every act of virtue, every good deed, makes us more pleasing to God; and God's satisfaction leads to an increase of virtue in us.

The third is prayer. “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after justice, for they shall have their fill” (Matt 5:6). Justice is a certain perfection in virtue.

Prayer stimulates growth in two ways: by being a good act and, hence, by meriting an increase in the growth of virtue, like any other good deed. It has a value of its own, a “petition value.” “Ask and you shall receive” (John 16:24).

This petition value is increased when we consciously link our lives and our prayers with the community of the Church, for we're assured that “wherever there are two or three gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matt. 18:20), praying with them.

Virtue can also decrease. It can vanish entirely. With the passage of time, we come to be more conscious of our weakness, our wretchedness, our miseries. So inconstant is our will and our efforts. We're beset very often by many difficulties, dangers, enemies.

The greatest enemy, the saints tell us, is venial sin, which is not sufficiently rejected, not as energetically combated as it should be.

Venial sin hinders the growth of grace and virtue, bringing it to a standstill. It can't attack grace and virtue directly; they are too pure and divine.

But it can weaken the flow of life to the branch, thereby retarding the growth of divine virtue, especially love.

Venial sins, like dense undergrowth, shut out the light from the tender plants of grace and virtue, gradually choking them.

The poisonous roots of habitual venial sins damage the soil, wasting its strength and infecting the atmosphere so that the sun-loving plants of grace and virtue cannot live.

At the same time, they destroy many seedlings out of which virtues are destined to grow. That is the pernicious work of venial sins.

Because of mortal sin, we may even lose the virtue God has implanted in our soul, because mortal sin primarily kills the most essential of all virtues, which is love.

Once love, which binds us to God, has been killed, all other virtues, except for faith and hope, automatically leave the soul. The garden of the Christian soul lies waste and desolate. All growth and life are destroyed.

Only faith remains, a faint glimmer, together with hope, until the poor soul, through unbelief and despair, destroys even these last memories.

Then night and barrenness descend. There is left only one pale light, the baptismal imprint, which can never be extinguished. It lives on, never ceasing to sigh for the return of grace and virtue.

All of us have proof of the wickedness, the sinfulness, and the wickedness of our hearts. St. Paul to the Corinthians says, “He that thinks himself strong enough to stand, let him take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12).

To the Romans he says, “It is not of him that wills…but of God that shows mercy” (Rom. 9:16).

To the Philippians, “With fear and trembling, work out your own salvation” (Phil. 2:12).

We can lose grace and virtue. We're all prone to sin and can only thank the mercy and protection of God Our Savior if we are spared the loss of grace and virtue.

Hence, how wise and prudent is the encouragement of weekly sacramental Confession.

All supernatural graces support one another. They combine, increase, or they decrease together. They do not stand, like so many trees, side by side, each developing in its fashion.

It is more accurate to say that they constitute one tree, alive with sanctifying grace, in which they have their roots; a single, complete whole.

In the human organism, an arm does not grow by itself, neither a heart nor a hand. All parts of the body grow together, fully dependent upon one another.

It's the same with the organism of supernatural grace and virtue. All virtues unfold together and increase or decrease by the same impulse.

It cannot be otherwise. All are closely linked by the virtue of divine love.

St. Paul says, “Charity is patient, is kind, does not envy, is not puffed up, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor. 13:4-7).

The person who possesses supernatural love for God and for his neighbor is strong and ready to practice every virtue whenever and however opportunity occurs.

Love centers all our thinking, our striving, and our dealings with God, regulating our whole life, both private and social, according to the requirements of human and supernatural Christian virtues.

St. Augustine says, “Love, and then do what you want.” Whatever springs from the perfect love of God is always good, pleasing to God, virtuous.

The person who has perfect love possesses every virtue: faith, hope, true wisdom, courage, temperance, justice.

The more complete the love of God, the simpler and more fruitful our life of virtue. Love is the soul of all the virtues.

It is therefore most important to strive for love and possess love. All the virtues grow automatically and in pace with love.

Sometimes it happens that a person has one virtue but lacks others. The person might be chaste but at the same time proud, vain. They might be obedient, but also haughty; pious but unloving, self-opinionated, impatient, selfish.

This is a disruption of virtues. It springs from the fact that the person's concern is imperfect, weak in virtue.

Only where virtue is imperfect and weak do we meet caricatures of Christian virtue, which may be all around us.

There's something magnificent about Christian supernatural virtue. In this state we truly live the life of Christ with Him.

We can ask Our Lady to help us to sufficiently appreciate what this means.

Mary, help me to have greater zeal in that quest for Christian virtues, in that full realization of Christ within me.

Help me to be aware of any obstacles to that growth in virtue. Help me to see what I must do.

Help me to be inspired by your words: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior” (Luke 1:46).

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

KI