“For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters” Romans 8:29
The life of pursuing virtue is a great journey that calls us to dedicate ourselves to the purification of the soul and its faculties, wounded by the effects of original sin. It is a process that involves placing our desires in the right order and aligning them with the Divine Will. It is a life that molds our inner disposition according to the pattern of Christ.
“Whoever says, ‘I abide in him,’ ought to walk just as he walked.” 1 John 2:6
To walk as He walked requires an interior disposition of openness to the will of God. This disposition prepares the way for more and more grace which empowers us to overcome the disordered inclinations that hinder our spiritual growth and God’s action in and through us. By pursuing this holy disposition, we can progressively attain the fullness of our potential, become a reflection of Christ, and draw closer to the eternal destiny that awaits us.
Wounds of Original Sin
To understand how grace and virtue heal us we need to better understand the wounds that need healing. Before the original sin of Adam and Eve, human reason had perfect control over the different parts of our soul, and that reason was perfectly subject to God. However, this state of innocence was lost through original sin. As a result, the different powers of our soul, that were naturally directed toward virtue, no longer have their proper order. This disorder is called the wounding of our nature.
As St. Thomas Aquinas explains in the Summa Theologiae “As a result of original justice, the reason had [a] perfect hold over the lower parts of the soul, while reason itself was perfected by God, and was subject to Him. Now this same original justice was forfeited through the sin of our first parent… so that all the powers of the soul are left, as it were, destitute of their proper order, whereby they are naturally directed to virtue; which destitution is called a wounding of nature.”
Four powers of our soul can be influenced by virtue: the intellect, the will, the irascible appetite (the part that deals with courage), and the concupiscible appetite (the part that deals with self-control). With Original Sin, these powers became wounded, meaning deprived of their proper order, and this wound has passed on to all of us. St. Thomas Aquinas develops this idea extensively in the Summa Theologica (Part 2.1, question 85, article 3). He articulates each of these wounds as:
- Blindness: When reason is no longer ordered to truth, we experience blindness (sometimes called ignorance).
- Malice: When the will is no longer ordered to what is good, we experience malice.
- Weakness: When the irascible appetite is deprived of its power to follow through on difficult tasks, we experience weakness (also called frailty).
- Concupiscence: When the concupiscible appetite is deprived of its power to enjoy things in proper moderation, we experience concupiscence (also called disordered desires).
These four wounds affect all of humanity because of our first parents’ sin. However, since each individual also commits actual sins, these wounds are increased.
Again, St. Thomas says, “These four wounds are also the result of other sins, in so far as, through sin, the reason is obscured, especially in practical matters, the will hardened to evil, good actions become more difficult and concupiscence more impetuous.”
In other words, every time we sin, our reason becomes further darkened and our will becomes bent towards evil, making it more difficult to desire what is good. The good actions that we want to choose become harder to accomplish, and our disordered desires become stronger and more impulsive.
Virtue – Restoring Our Wounded Nature
These wounds tend to perpetuate sin, disorder, and destruction in our lives and relationships. In Holy Scripture, four natural virtues are identified that counteract these harmful tendencies.
“And if a man love justice: her labors have great virtues; for she teacheth temperance, and prudence, and justice, and fortitude, which are such things as men can have nothing more profitable in life.” Wisdom 8:7
These classical moral virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, allow us to work to restore order to each of our soul’s wounded powers.
- Prudence is a virtue of the intellect that strengthens against the wound of blindness.
- Justice is a virtue of the will that strengthens against the wound of malice
- Fortitude is a virtue of the will that strengthens against the wound of weakness
- Temperance is a virtue of the will that strengthens against the wound of concupiscence (or disordered desires)
We can strive by these natural virtues to recover some of the order that original sin, and our own sins, have lost in us. These are good virtues and when practiced, they make for a decent and orderly society. But our wounded nature cannot be fully restored without the grace of God. For this reason, our spiritual wounds begin to be truly healed through the sacrament of Baptism, which imbues (or infuses) sanctifying grace in our souls. Once we have received this life of grace, we are invited into a higher form of life, the supernatural life.
“Baptism, by imparting the life of Christ’s grace, erases original sin and turns a man back towards God, but the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist in man and summon him to spiritual battle.” Catechism of the Catholic Church 405
The Supernatural Virtues and Gifts
Beyond the natural moral virtues, when we are baptized and receive Sanctifying Grace, we also receive seven infused virtues. Four are the supernatural, infused forms of the moral virtues mentioned above, prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. To these are added three new virtues that have God alone as their object — Faith for the intellect and Hope and Charity for the will.
Faith, Hope, and Charity
Faith is the virtue that gives assent with the mind to all that God has revealed. It is to believe that divine revelation is more real than our own perceptions of reality (which can be darkened by sin). Faith illuminates the intellect with the highest truths. By its power we come to know God, who we are, what we are for, and where we are going.
Hope is the virtue of trusting that God will fulfill His promises. It is the virtue that gives the power to the martyrs to sacrifice their lives with love and often with joy. Hope gives us the power to continue doing the good in great difficulty and confusion. “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for Thou art with me.” (Psalms 23:4)
Charity is the bond of perfection and the power that crowns all the virtues. It is the love of God for his own sake and the love of neighbor for the sake of God. It is the power to desire union with God above all other desires. This fire of love is symbolized in the flames of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
The Gifts of the Holy Spirit
In addition to the seven infused virtues which enable us to perform acts that are meritorious before God, we also receive the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit. Unlike the virtues, we cannot act on these gifts whenever we want. Though they remain in us as long as we are in the state of grace, they operate at the time and in the way of God’s choosing.
These supernatural virtues and gifts are powers that enable our souls, in the state of grace, to grow in the knowledge and love of God, and by His grace, restore our wounded nature and reach the perfection that Christ calls us to.
Habits and Development
Now that we understand something of the wounds of sin and the gifts of grace let’s consider the power of our own choices in how we develop in virtue or vice.
Human character develops through the formation of various habits that shape our behavior and actions. These habits are fundamental to our daily lives and influence how we interact with the world. For instance, coming to enjoy or dislike certain things by repitition, often complaining, or often being patient in difficult circumstances are all examples of habits that affect the way we act. Initially, some activities might be challenging to perform, but with enough encouragement and repetition, these habits become like second nature and may flow from us without any conscious thought.
That’s why the development of habits plays a crucial role in enabling us to perform and find pleasure in doing good. When we practice a particular action or activity consistently, it becomes ingrained in our behavior, making the activity easier and more enjoyable. This process of habituation allows us to develop behaviors that contribute to who we are. But it’s essential to realize that these habitual activities can be either good or bad. The more we confirm these habits by choosing to act according to them, the more we are shaped by them.
For good, or for evil, we become what we confirm by our will in the sequence of choices we make throughout the entire span of our lives. This means that as we grow older we become the culmination of our habitual choices and actions.
This does not mean that a person who has lived a life ruled by vice cannot receive the grace of a deathbed conversion. Far from it, we all begin with disordered habits and the moment of our conversion may be very early in life or very late. However, once we receive the light of grace, it is crucial to confirm it by choosing to act in accordance with this new life. That is, by habitually choosing God’s will and not our own. The more we do this, the more we cultivate all the virtues and possess a disposition of grace and peace.
On the other hand, we can also receive the life of grace and cling to our disordered habits, and if they are grave in matter, we will lose grace again by mortal sin. If they are light matter, we will not lose sanctifying grace but we will be stunted in our spiritual growth and never reach “the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13). Our calling is to choose God’s will and to sacrifice our own out of love for Him. If we confirm this choice, again and again, we become like the tree that is planted by living waters that, over time, becomes glorious, bearing abundant fruit.
The beauty we see in the lives of the saints is the radiance of God’s grace made manifest in them by the habitual conforming of their will to the will of God in the details of their lives.
The Life of Virtue
“The life of man upon earth is a warfare…” Job 7:1
The life of virtue is a life oriented toward the pursuit of our supernatural calling. Simply put, it is being awake to reality, perceiving the conflict between good and evil within ourselves, and striving to gain the victory with Christ and by His power. This is a life of adventure and drama where the smallest interactions have eternal significance. Living in this perspective is to engage in the great story of our redemption. It is to see that though we suffer under the weight of this present darkness we are, as children of the light, called to become instruments in the hands of God and to restore all things in the Name of Jesus. And though it is all these grand and glorious things, it is also a simple and loving intimacy of the soul with God.
The life of virtue is the life of Christ in the soul, and this life is the light of the world. This is because the habits of virtue in the soul manifest the power of Christ to the world. They become moral miracles that bear witness to His transforming power and the fullness of His life in those who live in Him.
