Episode 14: The Moral Virtues
The Danger of Complacency
An opening mediation
“Only the Catholic Church protested against the Hitlerian onslaught on liberty. Up till then I had not been interested in the Church, but today I feel a great admiration for the Church, which alone has had the courage to struggle for spiritual truth and moral liberty”
It is perhaps best to admit to you now that one of the biggest hurdles in anyone's faith journey is living a moral life. In John chapter 14, Jesus explains, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments" (verse 15). On the surface, this seems like a fairly straight forward instruction. However, at a deeper level, Jesus is asking us to prove our love to him by entirely remaking who we are on the inside. The commitment to a moral life is the ultimate denial of self, to rise to a new life in Christ.
The struggle with moral life is inevitably our ability or inability to understand our own motivations. We can often see through the thin veil of good intention with which other people behave quite uncharitably, but for ourselves the justifications for our behavior create impenetrable brick walls we cannot see through. The challenge, with the Holy Spirit's help, is to climb over them and peer down into our more unflattering inclinations with a willingness to clear out the muck. But what do we do when the choice we make seems harmless? This more than anything else can make us dangerously complacent to our own behavior. For a wonderful illustration of this, I turn back to that master manipulator of humanity, Screwtape.
“My dear Wormwood,
The contemptuous way in which you spoke of gluttony as a means of catching souls, in your last letter, only shows your ignorance. One of the great achievements of the last hundred years has been to deaden the human conscience on that subject, so that by now you will hardly find a sermon preached or a conscience troubled about it in the whole length and breadth of Europe. This has largely been effected by concentrating all our efforts on gluttony of Delicacy, not gluttony of Excess. Your patient’s mother, as I learn from the dossier and you might have learned from Glubose, is a good example. She would be astonished — one day, I hope, will be — to learn that her whole life is enslaved to this kind of sensuality, which is quite concealed from her by the very fact that the quantities involved are small. But what do quantities matter, provided we can use a human belly and palate to produce querulousness, impatience, uncharitableness, and self-concern? Glubose has this old woman well in hand. She is a positive terror to hostesses and servants. She is always turning from what has been offered her to say with a demure little sigh and a smile “Oh please, please... all I want is a cup of tea, weak but not too weak, and the teeniest weeniest bit of really crisp toast”. You see? Because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before her, she never recognizes as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others. At the very moment of indulging her appetite she believes that she is practicing temperance. In a crowded restaurant she gives a little scream at the plate which some overworked waitress has set before her and says, “Oh, that’s far, far too much! Take it away and bring me about a quarter of it”. If challenged, she would say she was doing this to avoid waste; in reality she does it because the particular shade of delicacy to which we have enslaved her is offended by the sight of more food than she happens to want.
The real value of the quiet, unobtrusive work which Glubose has been doing for years on this old woman can be gauged by the way in which her belly now dominates her whole life. The woman is in what may be called the “All-I-want” state of mind. All she wants is a cup of tea properly made, or an egg properly boiled, or a slice of bread properly toasted. But she never finds any servant or any friend who can do these simple things “properly” — because her “properly” conceals an insatiable demand for the exact, and almost impossible, palatal pleasures which she imagines she remembers from the past; a past described by her as “the days when you could get good servants” but known to us as the days when her senses were more easily pleased and she had pleasures of other kinds which made her less dependent on those of the table. Meanwhile, the daily disappointment produces daily ill temper: cooks give notice and friendships are cooled. If ever the Enemy introduces into her mind a faint suspicion that she is too interested in food, Glubose counters it by suggesting to her that she doesn’t mind what she eats herself but “does like to have things nice for her boy”. In fact, of course, her greed has been one of the chief sources of his domestic discomfort for many years.
Now your patient is his mother’s son. While working your hardest, quite rightly, on other fronts, you must not neglect a little quiet infiltration in respect of gluttony. Being a male, he is not so likely to be caught by the “All I want” camouflage. Males are best turned into gluttons with the help of their vanity. They ought to be made to think themselves very knowing about food, to pique themselves on having found the only restaurant in the town where steaks are really “properly” cooked. What begins as vanity can then be gradually turned into habit. But, however you approach it, the great thing is to bring him into the state in which the denial of any one indulgence – it matters not which, champagne or tea, sole colbert or cigarettes — “puts him out”, for then his charity, justice, and obedience are all at your mercy.
Mere excess in food is much less valuable than delicacy. Its chief use is as a kind of artillery preparation for attacks on chastity. On that, as on every other subject, keep your man in a condition of false spirituality. Never let him notice the medical aspect. Keep him wondering what pride or lack of faith has delivered him into your hands when a simple enquiry into what he has been eating or drinking for the last twenty four hours would show him whence your ammunition comes and thus enable him by a very little abstinence to imperil your lines of communication. If he must think of the medical side of chastity, feed him the grand lie which we have made the English humans believe, that physical exercise in excess and consequent fatigue are specially favorable to this virtue. How they can believe this, in face of the notorious lustfulness of sailors and soldiers, may well be asked. But we used the schoolmasters to put the story about — men who were really interested in chastity as an excuse for games and therefore recommended games as an aid to chastity. But this whole business is too large to deal with at the tail-end of a letter,
Your affectionate uncle,
Screwtape”
Even in modern life, it is not hard to see the trappings of the gluttony of Delicacy as we order our half-caf skim milk mochaccinos. Nor do we question the behavior of a friend, who refuses to join in on a group outing on Nassau Street because the quality of the chose restaurant does not meet their "standards". In an era of Entitlement and Self-love, we are championed for our commitment to the good things in life, even if we gain them at the expense of someone else. Many an uncharitable action was born when the phrase "I was well within my rights" was uttered.
The commandments Jesus asks us to follow to prove our love are simple when stated:
Love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.
Love your neighbor, as yourself.
Fully committing yourself to following them in the entirety, is a life-long journey of struggle to live a moral life. It will often only provide you with empathy for Sisyphus. Getting up and pushing your stone up the hill again, is where the faith comes in. When we let him, the Holy Spirit will even help us push.
Weekly
Prayer
Intentions
To be prayed daily
Pause for some silence
Pause for some silence
The Sign of the Cross
Start by touching your right hand to your forehead, then your stomach, followed by your left and right shoulders while saying "In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen"
The Litany of Humility
From the fear of being forgotten ...
From the fear of being ridiculed ...
From the fear of being wronged ...
From the fear of being suspected ...
That others may be loved more than I,
Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it. (Repeat after every line)
That others may be esteemed more than I ...
That, in the opinion of the world,
others may increase and I may decrease ...
That others may be chosen and I set aside ...
That others may be praised and I unnoticed ...
That others may be preferred to me in everything...
That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should...
Amen.
O Jesus! meek and humble of heart, Hear me.
From the desire of being esteemed,
Deliver me, Jesus. (Repeat after every line)
From the desire of being loved...
From the desire of being extolled ...
From the desire of being honored ...
From the desire of being praised ...
From the desire of being preferred to others...
From the desire of being consulted ...
From the desire of being approved ...
From the fear of being humiliated ...
From the fear of being despised...
From the fear of suffering rebukes ...
From the fear of being calumniated ...
Specific intentions:
Lord, strip me of my pride and fill me with a humble heart.
Lord, let me seek to ever increase in virtue.
Lord, illuminate my vices so that I may recognize them and root them out.
Personal intentions:
Please add your own intentions here.
Our Father:
Our Father, who art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Glory Be:
Glory be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be world without end, Amen.
Weekly
Journal
Prompt
Weekly Readings
Moral life based on the teaching of Scripture flows from God's loving plan for us. How does this correspond to your view of what the moral life is about? How would you live out such a plan? You are called to faithful assent to the Church's teachings on faith and morals. What challenges do you experience? How do you handle them? What motivates you to be a morally good person? Take a few minutes to write down your thoughts on these personal reflections.
Click on the Link to download each of the articles for further reading this week.
How Should We Live?
How does Christian live? Click here to download
Virtue and Vice
What is wrong and right? Click here to download
The Rule Book
Wait, there are rules? Click here to download
Weekly Activity:
Practice of the Virtues
This week your task is to embrace the self-discipline needed to practice the virtues. Self-discipline in a religious context can also have another name: Mortification. Mortification is the subduing of one's bodily desires. Being able to overcome our own desires allows us to be able to deny ourselves and follow Christ. This does not mean that we need to go so far in causing ourselves unnecessary pain. A little in this case goes a long way.
So your task for this week is to practice a mortification that corresponds to the virtue you thing you struggle with the most:
Chasity - Spend the week sparing your eyes from sexual imagery, be that television shows, movies, online content, etc.
Temperance - Spend the week taking a pause before eating. Bring your food to the table. While you are sitting at the table, wait 5 minutes before eating any of the food. Spend the time enjoying and talking to the people you came with.
Charity - Calculate the money you normally spend on some regular incidental expense, such as your morning coffee, and either use it to buy someone else coffee or give it the money away, instead of buying that coffee for yourself.
Diligence - Spend the week finishing all of your coursework for the day before doing any recreational activities, such as watching TV or going to a party.
Patience - Anytime you find yourself waiting in line or for someone you are meeting, do not feel the need to fill the time doing something else such as staring at your phone. Just enjoy the unexpected gift of an extra moment of contemplation.
Kindness - Spend the week actively avoiding criticism of others.
Humility - Anytime someone praises you this week, take the time right away to give credit to the other people who helped you achieve this goal, or automatically give the credit to God.