On Temperance

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.

At Cana of Galilee, Our Lady said, “They have no wine” (John 2:3). She did not say, ‘I have no wine’ or, ‘My glass is empty,’ but “they have no wine.”

The virtue of temperance is what our society calls “self-control”, “self-discipline”, “self-mastery.” It's a virtue that's closely related to personal toughness: the ability to dominate one's passions, appetites, and feelings, for the sake of a higher good.

It concerns mastery over our lower inclinations, including the ever-present temptation to laziness. It's also the ability to enjoy the good delights in life, in moderation.

There was a story about an elderly Irish nun, maybe 95 years of age, who was dying. She was in a coma for many months, and the other nuns used to give her some milk to sip because that was all she could take.

They decided to put a teaspoonful of brandy into the milk to give it a bit of a kick, and to give it extra vitamins. The day before this elderly nun died, she woke up. She said to them, “After I die, whatever you do, don't sell that cow.”

Temperance gives us the ability to enjoy the good delights of life in moderation. It helps us to be on top of life, in control of events, living as a self-reliant self-starter.

It's one of the indispensable qualities of leadership, one of the character strengths we admire most in other people. What we admire as “class” in people is often directly related to their habitual power of self-restraint.

Temperance is also the foundation, along with charity, of courtesy and habitual good manners.

Very often this virtue is praised in the Old Testament. The Book of Sirach says, “Do not follow the counsel of the appetite. Turn your back on your own liking” (Sir. 37:29).

“Temperance is the moral virtue that moderates the attraction of pleasures and provides balance in the use of created goods. It ensures the will's mastery over instincts and keeps desires within the limits of what is honorable. The temperate person directs thesensitive appetites toward what is good and maintains a healthy discretion” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, Point 1809).

In the New Testament, it's often called “moderation” or “sobriety.” We're told we ought “to live sober, upright, and godly lives” (Titus 2:12).

“To live well is nothing other than to love God with all one's heart, with all one's soul, and with all one's efforts; from this, it comes about that love is kept whole and uncorrupted through temperance” (St. Augustine, as quoted in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Point 1809).

This virtue tends to procure that coolness and clearness of head that we need in all situations.

By first attaining self-discipline in the area of food and drink, it makes adherence to all the other virtues easier. One writer says, “The glutton is much more than an animal and much less than a man” (Honoré de Balzac).

St. Paul speaks of the virtues that purify us for union with Our Lord. In the Letter to Titus, he says, “Grace trains us to renounce irreligion and worldly passions, and to live sober, upright, and godly lives in this world” (Titus 2:12).

Our Father in Friends of God says, “Temperance makes the soul sober, modest, understanding. It fosters a natural sense of reserve which everyone finds attractive because it denotes intelligent self-control.

“Temperance,” he says, “does not imply narrowness, but greatness of soul. There is much more deprivation in the intemperate heart which abdicates from self-dominion only to become enslaved to the first caller who comes along ringing some pathetic tinny cowbell” (Josemaría Escriva, Friends of God, Point 84).

In the life of Our Lord, we find a lot of temperance. That virtue must be present in our lifestyle if we want to follow Christ.

Sometimes we have to temper our speaking, to learn how to be more silent, to listen to others. If we're someone who tends not to speak very much, sometimes we have to temper our silence and learn how to speak more in get-togethers, in conversations.

“Be,” as St. Paul says, “all things to all men” (1 Cor. 9:22). Learn how to maintain a conversation with anybody, or to start a conversation.

Sometimes we have to temper our inactivity—to ask ourselves, what national or international organizations do I belong to? How do I have an influence?

Sometimes we need to temper our activity. We might be running around the place doing all sorts of things, possibly moving a lot but not working a lot. We might need to hear the voice of Our Lord in the Old Testament, “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10).

Sometimes we might need to temper our work. Pay more attention to rest, to music, to reading.

John Paul II in one of his apostolic letters, Dies Domini–“The Day of the Lord,” talks about the sacredness of rest.

Our Father talks in similar terms. We might need sometimes to temper our desires: our desire to read everything, to read the newspaper every day, or the latest thing that's come out, or the latest WhatsApp message; or our desire to listen to all the music that we can listen to.

We might need to temper our egoism, to think more of others. I remember being impressed hearing an 85-year-old lady accusing herself of thinking too much about herself.

She said, “I have to stop this nonsense of thinking about myself and think more of others.” A beautiful thing to hear in an elderly person.

Sometimes, we might have to temper our independence, to consult more things, leave ourselves open more to the will of God in our life, place things with faith at the feet of our directors.

We might need to temper our criticisms or our judgments with greater interior mortification.

That virtue needs to be present in our entire lifestyle if we are to follow Christ.

Self-mastery or self-control is not a word that we hear very frequently in modern parlance. It helps us to moderate our desire for pleasure, to be vigilant against our whims, to be generous in self-denial, to win souls with mortification—to show Our Lord with our deeds that we are serious.

Lack of temperance can destroy a soul. We may see that all around us—all sorts of overindulgence.

We can thank God for our vocation, for our formation, for the graces that He gives us to live moderate lives and to know how to put that moderation into practice in all sorts of ways.

Sometimes it might have to clash with our environment. Our colleagues and our friends might be doing things or going places where we don't go, spending things in a way that we don't spend.

Because we have been taught this wonderful virtue of moderation, we can thank God that we're saved from all those sorts of things, thanking God for the spirit of temperance in our lives. It leads us to enjoy the good things and not get lost in them.

For our friends to enjoy themselves, they might have to spend a lot of money or go on holidays far away.

We tell them, ‘I'm going to Limuru or Waiyaki Way for my holidays.’ But we know that we'll have a great time on our annual course in the company of our sisters.

Sometimes we need to begin again in practicing this virtue of temperance.

“That pleasant but insubstantial enchantment of the world,” said our Father, “is there all the time. You are attracted, by the color and smell of the flowers by the wayside, by the birds of the air, by all creatures. —My poor child: it's quite reasonable. For if you were not fascinated by it all, what sacrifice would you be able to offer Our Lord?” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 294).

We shouldn't be surprised by the fact that we feel an attraction for certain things. Or sometimes, our heart might yearn for things of this world. It's a sign we're normal, we're human.

But this virtue helps us to sanctify those moments. We might need to ask ourselves: What do I need to temper in my life? Perhaps there are things that before were not points of attachment, but now have become that way.

St. Paul says, “You run very well, but outside the course” (Gal. 5:7). Wouldn't it be funny if on the last Sunday of October when people gather in Nairobi, 20,000 of them, for that amazing experience of running for 42 kilometers to get a piece of paper, a cap, and a T-shirt, if somebody was to run 42 kilometers in the direction of Limuru, and come back and look for their piece of paper, T-shirt, and cap, and be told, “Look, you ran a great race in record time, but you ran the wrong course. You can't get the prize.”

Our formation and the help we get in the work—fraternal correction—helps us to run on the right course all the time, to moderate our love for work, or our desire to work sometimes in the evenings or weekends, so that we can spend more time in the apostolate or in internal things, or things that help in the development of the Work and its expansion all over the country.

Our Lord invites us to moderate our love of our own enjoyment, the desire, maybe, to watch the movie or the sport, and to enjoy it at all costs. There's a law of disorder within us.

The important thing in our sport or in watching a movie or in reading a book is not the enjoyment that we get from it, but the enjoyment it brings to others.

All our life has to be other-oriented, forgetting about ourselves. All through our Father's writings, he mentions that phrase again and again: “Forget yourself.”

Our temperance helps us to do that so that we think more of other people.

Therefore, we get our greatest enjoyment from the enjoyment that other people may get from the movie, or from us telling them about the book that we're reading. The enjoyment we bring to others in the get-together by telling them certain stories—we lift them up in all sorts of ways.

There was a pastor in Scotland one time who had a parishioner, a lady parishioner, who prepared a very special dessert for him that he liked very much. The dessert was swimming in whiskey.

She left it into his house anonymously, so he didn't know where it had come from. But he was very grateful for this dessert. He enjoyed it, especially the whiskey.

Then he wanted to thank that parishioner, but he didn't know who it was or how to thank her. He was thinking all weekend: ‘How can I do this?’ He knew he couldn't mention the whiskey, because the congregation was very sensitive about these sorts of things, even in Scotland.

But then he had a brainwave. The Holy Spirit worked. After the service the following Sunday, he announced that he wanted to thank that particular parishioner very much for that wonderful dessert that she had given into his house anonymously.

But he said, “What really moved me and touched me so much, warmed the cockles of my heart, was the spirit in which it was given.” That was the way that he managed to communicate that idea on that particular occasion.

If there's no temperance in our lives, we can end up restless, sad. Our hearts are in the things below, when Our Lord said, “Seek the things that are above” (Col. 3:2).

We can become a slave to material things. Our Lord bids us not to be enslaved by our likes and dislikes. To live a priestly soul, like the soul of Christ on the Cross, to know how to offer things when we can't have what we want, or we can't do what we would like.

Or sometimes, maybe, we're told a ‘no’ after consulting things. It might be food, it might be drink, it might be a movie, it might be sleep, it might be a trip, it might be a phone call.

But we learn how to live without. Our Lord has told us, “You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matt. 6:24). There's no middle ground. There's no compromise.

Often in our temperance is seen the authenticity of our life, how we're really living things in a serious way.

There was a support group once for ladies who were on diets. This lady came along, and she told how the previous day she had baked a cake, and her family ate half the cake.

Then that cake was there staring at her all day long. She decided she couldn't take the temptation anymore. She ate the other half of the cake.

Then she said, “I was very worried about what my husband would say when he heard that I'd eaten half the cake.”

The other ladies in the support group were eager to find out. They said, “What did your husband say when he found out?”

She said, “Oh, he never found out. I baked another cake and I ate half.”

This virtue is something we have to try and live with determination, seriously, and sometimes it's not so easy.

It means we moderate our love of self, thinking about ourselves, our compensations, our being worried about ourselves. We moderate that love of the world, the flesh, and the devil.

We have to try and live this virtue at all times. Even if we go to a party or dinner someplace and the food and drink are all free, we live our unity of life. It doesn't matter if the boss is paying or the company is paying. These are opportunities our Father wanted for us to give good example at the office party.

Or if there's a party going on, that we try to put a social dimension there. We remind people that ‘if we're going to spend this amount of money on this party, could we set a little bit aside and organize a party for some poor kids or for some elderly people?’ We infect other people with this sort of ideas.

If we're on a business trip, we don't spend money unnecessarily. We account very carefully, like the mother of a large and poor family.

Our temperance might involve occasionally abstaining from the Internet or from reading messages or whatever.

We have to try and take care that temperance is not sucked by the new paganism, a pagan atmosphere of overindulgence. We learn how to say no to ourselves, as our Father says in The Way (cf. Points 172, 175, 186).

It's a wonderful thing. We're in control. We're not out of control. Otherwise, we can end up leading a pagan lifestyle.

We have all the weaknesses of anybody in this world. We're all capable of the most terrible things. We're all capable of the greatest overindulgences that anybody could indulge in.

Therefore, we have to try and keep control. Somebody said once, “Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with, that it's compounding a felony” (Robert Benchley).

We have to try and look at some of these customs that may be there in society and see, ‘How can I be different? How does God want me to be different?’

He wants us to keep our hearts free to “seek first the kingdom of God” (Matt. 6:33).

Our Father says in The Way, “Be content with what enables you to lead a simple and sober life. Otherwise, you will never be an apostle” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 631).

Those are very interesting words. Who do you know in the world that is content? One of the great things about our vocation is that it leads us to great contentment.

We are the happiest people in the world, partly because of this virtue. It helps us to live that “simple and sober life,” to enjoy the good things, to see the beauty in nature and so many other areas.

We should make use of the things of this world as instruments, without putting our hearts into them, because our hearts are made for something else, higher things. “Our hearts are restless, Lord, until they rest in you” (St. Augustine, The Confessions, Book I. Chapter I.).

When we find the world having, getting, spending, we invite the world to think about giving, serving, helping. ‘How can I infect other people with those ideas?’

All the pleasures of the body are good. They are placed there by God. But this virtue of temperance helps us to submit those pleasures to the control of reason—and that's a task which requires effort.

Rebel passions lead to vice. We're not here to seek pleasure as if it were an end in itself and not as a means. That means also that we identify the paganism of the world that suggests sometimes you eat as much as you can, drink as much as you can, and spend as much as you can, and it doesn't matter.

Our Christian vocation leads us to think of all the people around us who perhaps don't have what we have. We lead that simple and sober life.

The functions of the body fulfill two ends. Eating and drinking preserve the health of the individual, while sex preserves the species.

There are pleasures associated with His actions that God has wanted, but He wants us to keep them in their place.

Lord, help us to practice that temperance in eating.

This doesn't mean we eat nothing, but we avoid the various forms of gluttony. Abstinence means not to eat to the full, so as to be genuinely hungry when the time for eating comes.

One Sister in the time of St. Teresa of Ávila was a bit scandalized because she saw St. Teresa eating a pheasant and really enjoying the pheasant that she was eating.

This young Sister was a little bit surprised and said to St. Teresa, “Shouldn't you be mortifying yourself a little bit or not enjoying yourself so much?”

St. Teresa answered, “When I fast, I fast. And when I pheasant, I pheasant.”

Our Father has taught us how to “pheasant”—how to have a good time, and maybe the best time, in our get-togethers, in family life, in the different activities that we have.

Part of that comes from being able to live this virtue well. We try to do all these things with reason.

Purity and chastity. The virtues whereby we control our desire for pleasure in those areas. We help the reproductive functions to function as God and nature intended.

Chastity involves the performance of the sexual act as God and nature intended, regulating it according to reason, within marriage, without any unnatural actions.

Modesty helps us to regulate the pleasure of dressing well. To be elegant means to dress according to one's measure and for the occasion.

A pair of blue jeans would be unbecoming for a presidential party, just like a long evening dress would be improper for an outing to the countryside. Our Father used to say you wouldn't wear a wedding dress to a picnic.

To be elegant means to be able to match the color and form of dress in order to pass unnoticed. Elegance is a social virtue that makes people comfortable in the presence of an elegantly dressed person.

The practice of good manners is not so much a matter of temperance as one of justice and charity. But temperance helps us to practice manners, to control ourselves, to eat in certain ways, to drink in certain ways, to behave in certain ways.

Temperance of the mind is known as studiousness (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II, II. Question 166). It's the good habit of acquiring knowledge within reason, not necessarily wanting to know everything.

The opposite to it is the vice of curiosity, by which useless or harmful knowledge is sought; and negligence, which makes us leave our talents undeveloped.

Temperance also has to do with material wealth. Usually, those who have more, want more. Temperance is the ability to be content with what we have. To enjoy it within reason. To thank God for it.

Not to be sad if someone has more than we have, but rather, to be happy about it. That person has perhaps more of this or more blessings of that.

We see other people's blessings, but we don't see their crosses. And God wants us to be happy with what we have.

The opposite vice is greed, or covetousness, or envy. Envy is sadness of the good of another.

This virtue helps us to be happy with what we have in our position, in our state in life.

Practical aspects of this could be to look for cheaper substitutes for some types of food. Our Father encouraged us not to choose the best for ourselves at table; not to despise any meal; sometimes, to eat a little less of what we like and a bit more of what we don't like.

Avoid becoming slaves of fashion. This thing is fashionable so I have to do it, irrespective of what it may cost or what it may mean. It can mean taking good care of our clothes in the material aspect—folding them, putting them away, preparing them for the next day.

Our Father says in the Furrow, “There are many who feel unhappy, just because they have too much of everything. Christians, if they really behave as God's children, will suffer discomfort, heat, tiredness, cold. … But they will never lack joy, because that—all that!—is ordained or permitted by Him who is the source of true happiness” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 82).

Sometimes we hear the phrase, “Virtue is ‘the mean between two extremes’ or ‘the golden mean.’” But this is not a license for mediocrity.

The mean between excess and effect is a peak. Our Father says, “Live modestly, given your wealth and position. Have the mentality of the mother of a large and poor family.”

People should be surprised if they were to know your financial position. Always look to live at a level a step or two down from your peers.

Avoid ostentation. Try to be the last, not the first, among your peers to acquire the latest luxury gadget.

Be wary of multiplying your possessions. How many computers or phones or whatever else do we really need? Our goal should be to downgrade, not to upgrade.

Life is service, not acquisition. Look to be, not to have.

We ask Our Lord that although immersed in the flux of this world, our hearts may be attuned to the source of true joys.

In the Opening Prayer for the 21st Week of Ordinary Time, it says: “Help us to seek the values that will bring us lasting joy in this changing world.”

Temperance is one of the virtues that leads us to that lasting joy.

We may see many other people with all sorts of ephemeral joys around us, things that don't last. But in our vocation in the Work, in our family, we have the lasting joys, and we look forward to the eternal wedding feast, as John Paul II liked to say.

We have great things to look forward to. This virtue may involve sometimes throwing out or giving away what we don't need—objects that we own, or we don't use over time, can have a funny way of taking possession of us.

Having few possessions can be a fine way to live social justice. We can give them away or turn them into money that can be given to the needy. If we haven't used something in the past year, probably we don't need it.

This virtue can involve making things last, taking care of things, remembering that attachments to material things in this world will eventually have to be burnt away in purgatory if we are to enter heaven. Better now rather than later.

This virtue can help us to live order and neatness in the care of material things. Happily, increasingly, many objects of personal family use, from cars to microwaves, are better made and last longer without repair. We have to try and take good care of them.

Avoid impulse buying, whims, and caprices. Much of our market economy is based on efforts to entice us to buy superfluous things or too much of truly useful things, and the advertisers are good at it. If we look at our cabinet or our clothes drawers, we see all the things that we may have accumulated.

That's why it's very good for us in the Work to consult our purchases, review carefully at the end of each month where our money has gone, and avoid occasions of sin, remote or proximate, with regards to buying and shopping, whether in shopping malls or through catalogs or on the Internet.

For some people it's computer stores, for others, bookshops or sports equipment, for others, it's virtually any store, before which they find themselves powerless.

Lord, help me to stay away from particular sources of conspicuous consumption temptation so that I take care of all these things.

Our Father says in The Way, “Try to live in such a way that you can voluntarily deprive yourself of the comfort and ease you wouldn't like to see in the life of another person of God” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 938).

We can ask Our Lady in May, that she may help us to live like she did at the wedding feast of Cana, careful about people around us, what they need, so that we can also say to Jesus, “They have no wine” (John 2:3).

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.

CPG