The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are an enumeration of seven spiritual gifts originating from patristic authors, later elaborated by five intellectual virtues and four other groups of ethical characteristics.
They are: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. Hope being a combination of the desire for something and expectation of receiving it, the virtue is hoping for Divine union and so eternal happiness. While faith is a function of the intellect, hope is an act of the will.
Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel. Skip to content Home Essay Why is temperance important? Ben Davis May 2, Why is temperance important? What is temperance health? In , she completed the diaconate formation training with her husband, Deacon Robert Standridge. This article was originally published in Arkansas Catholic Nov. Copyright Diocese of Little Rock.
All rights reserved. This article may be copied or redistributed with acknowledgement and permission of the publisher. Understanding Our Church. Pilgrimages open our hearts, minds to find God in all things. As pure spiritual beings, angels do exist. Virtue of temperance can offer life balance. Baptism calls all to Christian leadership. Day of peace calls us to seek peace in life. Daily Stoic Emails. Yesterday we discussed the Four Virtues, and talked about the primacy of courage.
Of course, life is not so simple as to say that courage is all the counts. While everyone would admit that courage is essential, we are also all well aware of people whose bravery turns to recklessness and becomes a fault when they begin to endanger themselves and others.
This is where Aristotle comes in. Inordinate desire for food and drink gives rise to a host of offspring. Firstly, on the part of the intellect. We have already seen that attachment to the pleasures of touch compromises one's interest in the realm of the intelligible.
But gluttony is already an immersion into matter that is unreasonable, and so the mind is dulled, for it has been drafted into the service of inordinate appetite. This affects prudence, for prudence has the intellect as its subject.
And prudence is the mother of the virtues, for without prudence, there is no virtue. Thomas includes "unseemly joy" as a vice arising from gluttony, a "random riotous joy," he says in another place. This is the disingenuous joy of the "Jolly Rogers" type of fellow, a joy that the shrewd will find suspect. One easily detects that the slightest change of circumstance that causes inconvenience will quickly bring down this fragile house of cards, which is a false joy. Loquaciousness, or inordinate words, is another offspring of the gluttonous heart.
We all know people who can't seem to "shut up", or who "love to hear themselves talk. Thomas says, we cannot say that we love that which we choose to destroy, such as the wine we consume or the apple we eat. It is the self that is loved in the love of these things. That is why inordinate love of food and drink amounts to inordinate self-love.
And this is the root of the habit of loquaciousness. The loquacious love to be the center of attention and for some reason believe that others delight in them about as much as they delight in themselves. And so they employ their words to that end, namely, being the object of others' attention. As long as they are talking, others have no choice but to listen, and so they prolong their discourse as long as circumstances allow, if not longer. And the matter of their conversation will almost always center around themselves in some way, either directly or indirectly.
Scurrility, or unbecoming words, is a vice that springs from gluttony, for it proceeds from a loss of sense and a lack of awareness that is also part and parcel of inordinate self-love. The self is so focused on itself that awareness of others as "other" has virtually disappeared. One is aware of the other as "spectator" or onlooker who cannot but delight in what he sees and hears. Consider what is implied in the expression: "If only you could hear yourself now. This is especially the case with regard to alcoholic drink.
As Thomas says: "it hinders the use of reason even more than excessive eating. In genuine disinterested love, I become all others whom I love. I expand and become more than what I am in myself. Chastity Chastity is that virtue which moderates the emotions relating to sexual pleasure. These pleasures, as Thomas points out, "are more impetuous and are more oppressive on the reason than the pleasures of the palate: and therefore they are in greater need of chastisement and restraint, since if one consent to them this increases the force of concupiscence and weakens the strength of the mind.
From the point of view of contemporary Western culture, directing the emotions of the concupiscible appetite, as they bear upon the sexual act, according to the order of reason is regarded for the most part as pointless and arbitrary, since fulfillment is popularly understood to mean the fulfillment or satisfaction of desire, as opposed to the proper ordering of desire. The decision to ignore this and make the effort needed to cultivate chastity will nevertheless bring rich rewards to the emotional and moral levels of a person's life.
The sexual act ought to be expressive of a genuinely disinterested love, a love that wills good for the other as another self. The intense pleasure that accompanies this act makes this very difficult to do, and almost impossible if one's sole source of moral direction is contemporary popular culture.
Loving another for what he does for me is nothing more than self-love, and it is all too easy for the sex act to become little more than an instance of this kind of self-centeredness.
The criterion for the mean of virtue is, as in the virtue of abstinence, human life in this case, the begetting of human life. Now the context that is most favorable to the physical, emotional and moral well-being of offspring is the marriage union between both parents. That is why marital communion is part and parcel of the criterion of the mean of reason when it comes to sexual activity. In fact, marital communion and procreation constitute the single reality of marriage, for all genuine love is both unitive and effusive, and this is true above all of marital love.
The act of sexual union has a conjugal meaning. In other words, sexual union is a marriage act. The reason is that it is precisely a joining of male and female into one flesh, one body. In this unitive act, the two become reproductively one organism. The male by himself is reproductively incomplete, and the female by herself is reproductively incomplete. In the act of sexual union, the two become a reproductive unity.
But marriage itself is a freely intended joining of two into one flesh, one body. It is a unique relationship, established by a mutual self-giving. And since a human person is his body, that self-giving includes in its meaning the giving of one's body to another. This self-giving is mutual.
It is this relationship that the two will for one another and establish by a free consent. And that is why marriage is consummated by the couple's first act of sexual intercourse. In this act, the two become one body. This first act, moreover, must be fully expressive of the integral meaning of the sex act if it is to consummate this union.
The problem with self-love with regard to the sexual act is that the means of the benefit that accrues to the self pleasure is another human person, and to use a person is to abuse a person. That is why using a person sexually is always contrary to virtue, whether it occurs within marriage or without.
Disinterested love wills good for the other as another self, and not as a means to one's self. Now what is willed for the other makes the difference between a genuine love and a disordered love.
Willing merely sensible good pleasure for the other and surrendering oneself over to her as a means of her sexual pleasure is not to will virtue for the other and virtue is a greater good than mere pleasure. For I am allowing the other to use me as a means to an end, that is, I am allowing the other to use me as an object of her self-love. And using another human being as a means to an end is always contrary to his status as a person equal in dignity to oneself. Willing good for her that does not involve a violation of self-respect on my part entails willing that her act of intercourse be expressive of a disinterested love.
I must will that she love me as an end, and not as a means to an end. Now sexual intercourse is an act of one flesh union, which is marriage. The physical act ought to express one's intention, in this case the intention to be one flesh, otherwise the act bespeaks a lie. If I love the other as another self, I must will a good for her, a good that is in keeping with virtue.
Marital communion is more than a mere sensible good. It is an intelligible human good that the two establish through their mutual self-giving. And so the good that is willed in the act of sexual union is precisely the good of marital communion.
Sexual union is thus a celebration and expression of marriage. Having sex while withholding the intention to be one body is to engage in an act that lies, an act whose symbolic value is not congruent with the intention of the heart. The act is inevitably one of self-love, which reduces the other to a means of venereal pleasure. And so non-marital intercourse is unchaste and contrary to reason, and as such cannot lead a person to emotional fulfillment.
Joy is an effect of disinterested love. But this joy is very different from the emotional complacency experienced through union with a pleasurable object. Joy that is in the will is more enduring, while satisfaction of desire lasts until hunger is once again aroused, which is never long in coming. Those who indulge in non-marital intercourse will experience this temporary sensible "satisfaction", but not the enduring joy of a disinterested and holy love.
A feeling of emptiness succeeds this sort of behavior; for it has failed to deliver what it promised, namely, ecstasy. In fact, the very word ecstasy comes from the Greek word ekstasis, which indicates a standing outside of oneself. A genuine human ecstasy is one rooted in genuine human love, not self-love; for only genuine disinterested love reaches out beyond the self to another person who is loved for his own sake.
Self-love does not tend beyond the self, and so is never ecstatic. Furthermore, this ecstatic joy, on account of man's psychosomatic unity, is communicated to the body, thereby increasing the pleasure of the sexual act.
And so unchaste sex is never as pleasurable and meaningful as chaste marital intercourse. The search for ever more perverse forms of sexual play is only testimony to the emotional emptiness that indicates the presence of inordinate self-love as the root and motivating principle of one's sexual practices.
Lust and its Offspring As gluttony tends to reduce virtue to naught, much more so does lust, the capital vice opposed to chastity. Lust involves using another sexually as a means to an end. It involves engaging in the sexual act outside of the context of the intelligible end of marital communion. Its offspring are many. Like gluttony, lust darkens the mind, and it does so by affecting four acts of the intellect, according to Thomas. Firstly, it affects our ability to apprehend certain ends as good, which Thomas calls blindness of mind.
What is evil is regarded as good, and what is good is regarded as evil. One's mind becomes so immersed in the sensual that the criteria one employs to determine the good are no longer intelligible principles, but sense pleasures.
For instance, some people have been so affected by lust that they can no longer see marital fidelity as a good. In the past, some have chosen to "open" their marriages as a means of bringing excitement and new life into their relationship. Some have even risked their high position in government not to mention the risk of bringing shame upon their wives and family for the sake of a momentary experience of sexual pleasure.
Clearly "blindness of mind" is the only thing that accounts for such attitude and behavior. Furthermore, lust affects the intellectual act of counsel, which inquires into the means to the end a part of prudence. This requires patience, which a person on fire with lust does not have, and thoughtful consideration, to which he is not disposed on account of his immersion into the sensual. And so Thomas numbers rashness or impetuosity as a daughter of lust, which is the absence of counsel.
Thoughtlessness, a vice contrary to good judgment, is also an effect of lust, for thoughtfulness regards others, and as such presupposes an ability to forget oneself at least for a time.
But the habit of lust attaches a person to himself and renders the exit-of-self required by thoughtfulness very difficult if not impossible to achieve. Reason may command one to do certain things, but because of the habit of self-attachment, a person is inconstant. Hence, lust destroys prudence, the mould and mother of virtue. Spiritual joys are distasteful to those immersed in sensuality. Furthermore, there is a hatred for God and a total lack of "fear of God" in those who live for venereal delight.
And so we should not be surprised to learn of such despair. This is quite possibly the principal reason for the apparent increase in atheism today. It has been said that at the root of atheism is a revolt of conscience, and this revolt almost always centers around a decision concerning sexual acts. Because of the habit of inordinate self-love, the achievement of a holy love is all but impossible. Consequently, the lustful person is not only indifferent to God and his commands, but such indifference quickly turns into a hatred of God who forbids the desired pleasure and His Church, who consistently echoes His commandments throughout the ages.
Lust also begets an inordinate love of this world, as opposed to a sober love that rebounds towards God who is the author of this world and the world's redeemer. It is the kind of love indicated in the expression "love is blind. Lust also begets despair of a future world, that is, of eternal life. And as gluttony begets loquaciousness, so too does lust have its own store of linguistic vices, such as obscenity, scurrilousness, wanton words, and foolish thinking.
These of course flow from the intellectual vices of rashness, thoughtlessness, and lack of awareness. Of particular note regarding obscene words is their reductionism.
Because lust alters the way the other is regarded for she is seen and evaluated primarily in the light of her capacity to satisfy lust the scope of one's vision tends to narrow down and focus solely on those aspects of the person that alone are relevant to the lustful appetite.
The whole person tends to be reduced to a part. And this is reflected in obscene vocabulary. This way of regarding the human person is culturally widespread and has become somewhat the norm.
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