Whatever happened to virtue? Sometimes it can seem like our world is greatly lacking in virtue. Every person struggles to grow in virtue. It requires effort and perseverance to grow in virtue. Yes, we can pray for God to help us grow in virtue, but we must also strive for it ourselves. Jeff Cavins explains what growth in virtue looks like and he also explains some of the primary virtues.
Snippet from the Show
We hope, we walk in faith and charity guides us.
Shownotes
Human Virtues
Love – To express love in word and deed
Peace – calmness in yourself and God
Joy – finding joy in God, the world and others
Forbearance – patience, and perseverance
Goodness – be generous to others
Kindness – having moral integrity
Gentleness – humility, and grace in situations
Faithfulness – being trustworthy to others and being faithful to God
Self-Control – controlling desires
Aristotle’s 12 Additional Virtues
Courage – including valor and bravery
Temperance – restraint and controlling one’s self
Liberality – generosity to others
Magnificence – spending great sums for honor’s sake
Pride – ambition, worthy of great things
Magnanimity – healthy belief in one’s own value
Good Temper – keeping a level head, patient
Friendliness – sociable to others
Truthfulness – being straightforward and honest
Wit – a sense of humor and joy
Modesty – neither shy nor shameless
Justice – having a fair mind and a sense of right and wrong
Catechism of the Catholic Church Paragraphs
1812
The human virtues are rooted in the theological virtues, which adapt man’s faculties for participation in the divine nature, for the theological virtues relate directly to God. They dispose Christians to live in a relationship with the Holy Trinity. They have the One and Triune God for their origin, motive, and object.
1813
The theological virtues are the foundation of Christian moral activity; they animate it and give it its special character. They inform and give life to all the moral virtues. They are infused by God into the souls of the faithful to make them capable of acting as his children and of meriting eternal life. They are the pledge of the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the faculties of the human being. There are three theological virtues: faith, hope, and charity.
1804
Human virtues are firm attitudes, stable dispositions, habitual perfections of intellect and will that govern our actions, order our passions, and guide our conduct according to reason and faith. They make possible ease, self-mastery, and joy in leading a morally good life. The virtuous man is he who freely practices the good.
1805
Four virtues play a pivotal role and accordingly are called “cardinal”; all the others are grouped around them. They are prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. “If anyone loves righteousness, [Wisdom’s] labors are virtues; for she teaches temperance and prudence, justice, and courage.”These virtues are praised under other names in many passages of Scripture.
1834
The human virtues are stable dispositions of the intellect and the will that govern our acts, order our passions, and guide our conduct in accordance with reason and faith. They can be grouped around the four cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.
1814
Faith is the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us, and that the Holy Church proposes for our belief because he is truth itself. By faith, “man freely commits his entire self to God.”For this reason, the believer seeks to know and do God’s will. “The righteous shall live by faith.” Living faith “work[s] through charity.”
1815
The gift of faith remains in one who has not sinned against it. But “faith apart from works is dead”: When it is deprived of hope and love, faith does not fully unite the believer to Christ and does not make him a living member of his Body.
1816
The disciple of Christ must not only keep the faith and live on it but also profess it, confidently bear witness to it, and spread it: “All, however, must be prepared to confess Christ before men and to follow him along the way of the Cross, amidst the persecutions which the Church never lacks.”
1817
Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit. “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.”“The Holy Spirit . . . he poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life.”
1818
The virtue of hope responds to the aspiration to happiness which God has placed in the heart of every man; it takes up the hopes that inspire men’s activities and purifies them so as to order them to the Kingdom of heaven; it keeps man from discouragement; it sustains him during times of abandonment; it opens up his heart in expectation of eternal beatitude. Buoyed up by hope, he is preserved from selfishness and led to the happiness that flows from charity.
1821
We can, therefore, hope in the glory of heaven promised by God to those who love him and do his will. In every circumstance, each one of us should hope, with the grace of God, to persevere “to the end” and to obtain the joy of heaven.
1822
Charity is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for his own sake and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God.
1823
Jesus makes charity the new commandment. By loving his own “to the end,” he makes manifest the Father’s love which he receives. By loving one another, the disciples imitate the love of Jesus, which they themselves receive. Whence Jesus says: “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you; abide in my love.” And again: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
1825
Christ died out of love for us, while we were still “enemies.” The Lord asks us to love as he does, even our enemies, to make ourselves the neighbor of those farthest away, and to love children and the poor as Christ himself.
1827
The practice of all the virtues is animated and inspired by charity, which “binds everything together in perfect harmony”; it is the form of the virtues; it articulates and orders them among themselves; it is the source and the goal of their Christian practice.
Colossians 1:5
“The faith and love that spring from the hope stored up for you in heaven and about which you have already heard in the true message of the gospel.”
Resources
- Email us at thejeffcavinsshow@ascensionpress.com
- Text “jeffcavins” to 33-777 to subscribe and get added to Jeff’s shownotes email list
- Visit Jeff’s website at www.jeffcavins.com
- The Great Adventure Bible
- Listen to The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
- Pilgrimages with Jeff
- Jeff’s Daily Gospel Reflections with Jonathan Roumie: www.hallow.com/jeffcavins
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Meet Your Host: Jeff Cavins
Jeff Cavins is passionate about helping people understand Scripture and become disciples of Jesus Christ. Though he was born Catholic, Jeff went to Bible school and served as a protestant minister for twelve years before reverting to the Catholic Faith. Jeff then received his MA in Theology from Franciscan University of Steubenville. Since then, he has become a leading Catholic evangelist and author.
Jeff created The Bible Timeline learning system, which revolutionized Catholic Bible Study for millions of Catholics. Since its introduction, Jeff has developed The Great Adventure series of Bible studies to help people better understand Sacred Scripture and its meaning for their lives.
