"Have you read my new book?"
I just returned from breakfast with George Weigel – he happened to pick my table to sit at – who was this morning’s speaker for the Catholic Professionals of Seattle. The basic gist of his talk was to promote his newest book: The End and the Beginning, which is a “sequel” and a completion of his 1999 biography of Pope John Paul II, Witness to Hope.
There was a bit of cold war spy drama, and a bit of “Lifestyles of the Holy and Famous,” and a bit of Vatican inside baseball; but one detail from his presentation jumped out at me. He said that he took part of the structure of his book from the process of canonization – the Catholic Church’s process of declaring someone a saint. One of the stages asks witnesses to describe the potential saint’s life in terms of the theological and cardinal virtues: Faith, Hope, and Charity; Prudence, Justice, Courage, and Temperance. Mr. Weigel noted, as an aside, that it’s an interesting exercise to look at life through the lens of the virtues, but that most people don’t do it.
A life out of focus
The virtues really form the only lens that has been able to bring my own life in to focus. But I only stumbled upon them by accident, myself. The classical model of virtue runs almost directly counter to most of twenty-first century American culture.
Now, Americans tend to value daring, or initiative, or valor; and that quality is similar to courage. Americans appreciate cleverness and foresight; those are certainly aspects of prudence. And it goes almost without saying that Americans are passionate about rights, which are a part of the virtue of justice.
However, American culture takes these values for granted, as a collection of qualities whose importance is assumed to be self-evident. In fact, it’s a kind of jumble that ultimately serves another purpose: one’s own interests.
Following the more-or-less normal course of life, I always found myself confused: should I take a risk or should I follow the safe course? Should I insist on my rights or make sure I’m not trampling someone else’s? Should I pursue my own interests or those of my employer/family/country?
Putting life in focus
When I discovered the idea of the virtues, I finally found a principle to help me answer all those questions. Like putting on my glasses, it brought all the fuzzy shapes into focus, and I could see more clearly what to do – and, more importantly, why to do it.
The virtues depend on one another. Love, or Charity, shows us what is good, and drives us to pursue it. Prudence shows us what is real, and sorts out the details of the situation as it really exists. These two virtues form the bedrock and cornerstone of our lives.
Justice and Faith both guide us in knowing what to do: we give to everyone what belongs to them, and we recognize them as fellow children of God, infinite in dignity and worthy of profound respect. These virtues form the framing structure that gives shape to our lives.
Hope, Courage, and Temperance all give us the strength or the stamina to follow through on the loving and prudent actions that Justice and Faith guide us to do. They support us in the face of despair, or fear, or temptation. They are like cross-braces that give a building strength and stability.
Taken together, the virtues describe the whole form of a person’s life.
An end and a beginning?
As Mr. Weigel points out in the life of Pope John Paul II, the virtues allow us to understand the depth and complexity of a man whose actions sometimes appeared confusing or contradictory to American eyes.
But I find virtue is as important at the beginning of each day as it is at the end of a life. I ask, how can I understand my own life; and how can I bring it to be the best life I can carry out, the kind of life I was created to live?
