Sat 13 Sep, 2008
Temperance is the natural virtue (a virtue that governs human nature) that helps us to balance our physical desires with our authentic needs. It keeps us from desiring physical goods too much, but it also teaches us not to spurn physical goods. The grace of Jesus Christ helps our wounded, fallen human nature to attain this natural virtue, but grace also elevates the natural virtue to a supernatural virtue (a virtue that helps us have a relationship with God). Last night at Eucharistic Adoration I was reading from the book Divine Mercy by Rev. Gerald Vann, O.P. This is an amazing book. The excerpt that struck me is below:
If you fail to see God in things you fail to see the things themselves; and in consequence, if you love them you are not really loving the things but a part of them. And when you isolate this partial vision, and love it, you tend to make your love a form of self-love. You tend to love things for what they can give you, you, and always you – and so indeed you set yourself up against God, and so indeed creatures are for you a stumbling block. But if, on the other hand, you realize that God is “all in all,” that He is what is inmost in things as well as what is infinitely apart from them, and that they are meant precisely to bring you to know Him – the visible things, as St. Paul tells us, meant precisely to teach us to see the invisible – and if, therefore, you learn to love things not partially but wholly, then indeed you love all things, and love them more passionately for loving them wholly, but at the same time you love nothing but God; there is no rivalry, there is only the all-inclusive universally of the Divine Love Itself.
Beautifully put. Supernatural temperance means seeing created goods as signs of God’s love for us, and valuing the Giver of the gift more completely than the gift itself. We enjoy physical goods because we enjoy God’s love, but we would gladly give up the physical good if our love for God required it (as indeed it sometimes does). By infusing physical goods with supernatural meaning and value, supernatural temperance enables us to enjoy physical goods even more intensely than we otherwise would. Love makes all things new.
You can buy Divine Pity at the From the Abbey bookstore! This truly is an amazing book!
The Divine Pity
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