Full transcript
0:00If you’re in Washington, D.C. and you want to get to New York under your own power,
0:04how would you go?
0:05You could walk or jog, of course,
0:07but it would be even faster if you went by bicycle
0:10– assuming that you’ve developed the habitual skill of riding a bike.
0:14Natural or acquired virtues, like justice and courage, are a bit like this.
0:19We develop them by repeated action – by practice – and they become stable
0:23dispositions that help us make progress towards the goal of human excellence.
0:28Now suppose that you want to go to the moon.
0:31To get there on your own power is simply impossible.
0:34In fact, not even a train or an airplane would help.
0:37No earth-bound vehicle can get you there.
0:39You need something vastly beyond yourself
0:42to propel you beyond earth’s atmosphere and escape earth’s gravity.
0:48St. Thomas Aquinas thinks the theological virtues are even more powerful than that
0:52– they are stable powers of the soul infused into us by God himself
0:56that raise us up beyond this natural world and empower us to penetrate into the heavens
1:03– indeed, to live the beginnings of the supernatural life of heaven, here and now.
1:19We read in Sacred Scripture about three theological virtues:
1:23faith, hope, and love.
1:26St. Paul’s letters are especially eloquent about them.
1:28He wrote to the early Christian communities in cities like Corinth and Rome,
1:32in order to hand on to them the divine revelation made in and through Jesus Christ:
1:37that being a disciple of Jesus means living according to the virtues of faith, hope, and love.
1:44If it weren’t for this divine revelation, which began in the Old Testament
1:48and reaches its culmination in Christ,
1:50we wouldn’t know about the promises of heaven,
1:53or about the supernatural virtues that we need in order to live
1:57the kind of supernatural life that will take us there.
2:00Reflecting on this, St. Thomas teaches that there are two kinds or levels of happiness that we can reach.
2:07The first is on the natural level, a happiness that a human being can obtain,
2:12at least in theory, by his own natural powers, by practicing the natural virtues.
2:17It’s a bit like an athlete who grows in skill and endurance by repeated training and practice,
2:23so that he can reach his goal of completing a difficult race with excellence.
2:27Similarly, the natural virtues (like the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance, and courage)
2:35can be acquired by repeated good human actions,
2:38and make the human being into the kind of person who is just, prudent, temperate, and courageous;
2:45And thus someone who can reach the goal of living a flourishing and happy life on the natural level.
2:52But the happiness of heaven, of eternal life with God,
2:56is something vastly higher than this natural happiness.
3:00Jesus teaches us that, by being configured to him,
3:03we become adopted sons and daughters of God,
3:07sharing in the divine nature.
3:08Our own natural powers are not sufficient to raise us up to this,
3:13and no amount of human training or moral effort will get us there without the help of God’s grace.
3:20We still need the cardinal virtues, of course, but we also need something more,
3:25something that directs us to and makes us capable of living a supernatural life,
3:31of attaining to supernatural happiness, which is to be united to God himself.
3:38This is why the theological virtues are so important.
3:42According to Aquinas, there are three reasons they are called “theological virtues”
3:48thats from the Greek word for God, “theos.”
3:51First, their object is God himself, and they direct us to God.
3:56Second, we cannot obtain the theological virtues by our natural powers,
4:02they must be directly infused in us by God himself.
4:07And third, we only know about the theological virtues because God has revealed them to us in Sacred Scripture.
4:14Understanding the theological virtues helps us to avoid two major errors about the Christian life.
4:21The first error is to think that we can somehow get to heaven by our own natural powers,
4:26or that the life of heaven will be like a life of earthly happiness.
4:31St. Thomas Aquinas is clear that this is a very big mistake.
4:35It is a bit like thinking that you could fly to the stars by flapping your arms.
4:40It seriously misunderstands that the life of God is infinitely above us.
4:46Jesus promises us a share in this divine life, which we can only obtain through the gift of his grace.
4:55It is totally out of proportion to our human nature.
4:57We don't deserve it, and we cannot reach it on our own.
5:02The second error is to think that, because it is given to us as a gift,
5:06therefore it is a kind of prize bestowed on us after we die,
5:10totally unrelated to how we lived our lives in this world.
5:15But that is not what Jesus taught, either.
5:17In fact, God bestows the beginnings of eternal life on us even as we live in this world.
5:24By his grace, he infuses his divine life into our souls,
5:29he configures our minds and our hearts to Christ,
5:32and empowers us to live as his disciples here and now.
5:37That's why St. Paul teaches that Christians live no longer as men and women of earth,
5:42but as citizens of heaven, according to the power of Christ’s resurrection,
5:47which makes us die to sin and alive to God through faith, hope, and love.
5:53In short, we are supposed to live our lives as Christians in this world
5:57according to the theological virtues, which really do elevate and transform our lives from the inside out.
6:03The theological virtues are in a sense the very substance of the Christian life.
6:08Growing in them in our daily actions is the measure of our growth in holiness as disciples of Christ.
6:17The theological virtues each perfect a different aspect of what is highest in the human being:
6:23our capacities of knowing and of loving,
6:26or what Aquinas calls our powers of intellect and of will.
6:29We’ll have more to say about this in future videos.
6:32For now, we can say briefly that the virtue of faith perfects our intellect.
6:37By the light of natural reason, we are able to know and understand the things we encounter in this world.
6:43Faith bestows a new and higher light on our minds,
6:48so that we are able to judge rightly about divine things,
6:51and above all, so that we believe what God has revealed to us in Christ.
6:56Faith thus allows us to attain to the truth about God,
7:00and makes us adhere to him as we believe what he tells us.
7:04In fact, Aquinas says that faith makes us like the divine Son
7:09who proceeds from the Father by way of intellect, as the Father's Word.
7:14The virtue of hope also has God as its object and makes us adhere to God,
7:19but it is not about our intellect grasping the truth.
7:22Rather, hope elevates our will, so that we place all our trust in God’s help,
7:27since he is perfectly good and the source of all goodness.
7:30By hope, we dare to reach for God himself,
7:34and we hope to obtain this happiness from God alone.
7:37We rely entirely on him, and place our lives and our futures completely in his hands.
7:44Finally, the virtue of love or of charity purifies and raises up our will,
7:49so that it ceases to love the things of this world as final ends,
7:53and begins to love God for his own sake and above all things.
7:57This supernatural virtue of love makes us like the Holy Spirit
8:02who proceeds from the Father and the Son as their mutual love.
8:06This virtue, above all others,
8:09reorders all of the priorities of the Christian’s life,
8:12all of the Christian's loves, even here and now in this world.
8:18If we act by this charity, then everything we do as Christians should point us back to God.
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