Chapter 6: The Christian Life of Virtue
6
The Christian Life of Virtue
Examining the cardinal and related virtues in the thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas, we have been considering those dispositions and attitudes that make us better human beings and that allow us to live a life that is more truly worthy of the human person. We are better people because we are prudent, just, courageous, and temperate. The choices and actions that flow from these dispositions are good—good for those impacted by our actions and good for ourselves as their agents. And, when individuals grow in these virtues and act in good ways, they contribute to relationships and communities that are also more authentically human and worthy of human beings. And such communities, in turn, contribute to the formation of men and women of sturdy virtue.
Aquinas’s teaching on these natural, moral virtues offers us important lessons for our life in the contemporary world. Today, many in our society no longer believe that we can speak of moral rules or principles that apply to all people in at least virtually all circumstances. The idea that there is a “natural law”—the foundation of traditional Catholic moral teaching—is suspect to a significant number of people, including those who self-identify as Catholic. At one time, we could speak of a shared “Judeo-Christian” heritage that included some shared sense of morality and of prohibited actions. Without such a basic moral sensibility, we must still find common moral ground in order to live together in society. In the context of our world today, the ability to appeal to a shared sense of the moral dispositions that should mark a good human life and a good human community would be no small accomplishment. In the end, we still might not reach the same conclusions about specific moral actions, but we would be a lot closer to some level of moral consensus in society. The teaching of Aquinas on virtue has a great deal to recommend it to us as human persons and as a society.
But this is not to say that he would have been content to leave it at that. For Aquinas, the virtues as good dispositions are very much tied to an objective moral order in which some things are right or wrong, regardless of an individual’s sincere belief about them. But more to our purposes in this book, for Saint Thomas, the natural moral virtues on their own can lead only to a kind of provisional, imperfect human excellence. His was a profoundly theological view of human life in general and of the moral life in particular. With the vision of Christian faith, Saint Thomas believed that, created in the image of God and made for divine union, we cannot reach our fullest development as humans except in relationship with God. The life truly worthy of the human person is life directed to and lived in divine communion. The apex of human community is sharing together in the life of the Persons of the Trinity.
For the Christian, the natural moral virtues—as essential as they are—do not tell the whole story. We also need virtues given to us by God, which do not eliminate our human virtues but allow them to attain their fullest form as directed to our union with God. For the Christian, the cardinal and related virtues do not have an existence within us independent of our relationship with the divine. Although the focus of this book has been the cardinal virtues, we cannot conclude our reflection without looking at where Saint Thomas himself actually begins: with the ultimate fulfillment of the human person in God and the virtues which are “infused”—poured into us—by God so that we can reach that lofty goal.
Ultimate Human Fulfillment and Happiness
For Aquinas, all human life and every human person has a goal. We are all inherently directed to our own authentic and ultimate fulfillment as human persons. Whether we are conscious of it or not, all of us are seeking our own fulfillment in every choice we make. We can call this fulfillment by the name “happiness,” but our truest life goal as human persons is not happiness in a superficial or incomplete way. Human life is aimed at that ultimate happiness which will be found only when we are most truly who and what we were meant to be as human persons. The natural human virtues that we have been discussing lead us, as we have seen, to a kind of human excellence, a fulfillment of what it means to be truly human in this world. But such excellence and this-worldly fulfillment as persons necessarily remains imperfect because our ultimate completion lies beyond anything that we can accomplish on our own in this life.
Following the creation story in Genesis (1:26–27), Aquinas (and the Catholic tradition with him) believed that the human person is created in the image of God. We are made in the divine image, and we are made for union with God. Therefore, we can only become who and what we were meant to be—most authentically human—when we are one with God. To be human is to have an infinite capacity for union with God—a destiny and a potential so lofty that it surpasses our unaided ability to realize. The reality of sin has further obstructed any possible realization of this goal by our own effort. But that which should be impossible for us is now made possible by the incarnation and saving death and resurrection of Christ. The power of sin is destroyed, and our humanity is renewed and elevated. And now, the church and its teaching, our sharing in its sacramental life, and prayer and other spiritual practices in the life of the Christian community are all aids in attaining our fulfillment: life together in and with God.
We, of course, have our own role to play, transformed through baptism and aided by God’s gracious presence. And the virtues are a central element in our part in the attainment of our ultimate fulfillment. The virtues, as we have seen, guide and form our natural capacities (which Aquinas identifies as our intellect, will, and sense appetites) so that we can arrive at a true, if incomplete, human excellence. The natural virtues are precisely the habitual dispositions, developed over time by our choices (always aided by grace), that enable us (together, teaches Aquinas, with law and grace) to perform good actions and to avoid evil. Fundamentally transformed by our baptism into Christ, our natural virtues do not lose their importance, nor are they left behind. Rather, these natural virtues are taken up into the completion of our life journey in God, which can only be accomplished by the further work of grace and the divine gift of the theological and other infused virtues. Our natural virtues—and our graced effort to develop them—become part of God’s greater work in fulfilling our true destiny as human persons created in the divine image.
Theological Virtues
We are not capable of good action apart from the grace of God. Even growth in the natural moral virtues requires the divine help. But the infused virtues come to us directly from God as a gift. These dispositions are “poured into us” (infused) by God, and they can also be called supernatural virtues as distinct from the natural virtues that we have been examining in previous chapters. We must claim them, embrace them, and nurture their growth within us; but we cannot produce them in ourselves. First and foremost among these God-given virtues are the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity.
We are accustomed to being assured of the closeness of God, of God’s love for us, and of the divine presence in the Spirit. God holds us in existence at every moment and, in this sense, is present to us at the most fundamental level of our being. We know that God calls us into relationship and invites us to share in eternal life (all of which is, of course, profoundly true). But perhaps we don’t often think about the fact that all of this is only possible because of God’s constant and renewed initiative and gift. Although God has created us and loves us with an immense love, there remains an infinite distance between God and us at a fundamental level. We are not capable, on our part alone, of entering into divine relationship, much less entering into union with God. This possibility comes to us through the wonder of the incarnation and the death and resurrection of Christ, by which the Son of God took on our humanity, bridged the infinite gap between us and God, and destroyed the alienating power of sin. Claiming and living this miraculous possibility is the wonder of the theological virtues given to us by God in Christ through the working of the Spirit.
On our own, we are not capable of coming to know God and truths about God. God must give us the gift of the theological virtue of faith for such knowledge. We would have no reason to expect to attain union with God, except that God gives us the hope that it is within our grasp, and that the divine help will not fail us along the way. We are not capable of embracing the divine self-giving love, nor of returning a true self-gift to God—the virtue of charity—unless it comes first as a divine gift.
The theological virtues relate us directly to God, and so they lead us to our true fulfillment in divine communion. Faith, hope, and charity don’t eliminate the cardinal and related virtues. Rather, they give them their full meaning and scope; the acquired virtues are “taken up” by the theological virtues. Now, it must be said that, in actual living, it is not as if we grow in the cardinal virtues and then are ready to “graduate” to theological virtues. We don’t develop the virtues of prudence, justice, courage, and temperance and then move on to faith, hope, and love. In traditional terms, the theological virtues come with grace—with being in a “state of grace”—and therefore in the actual unfolding of the Christian life in a person baptized as an infant, they are prior to, empowering of, and formative for the growth of the moral virtues. In fact, in actual living, we are constantly striving to embrace and nurture the theological virtues, even as we endeavor to grow in their natural, acquired counterparts.
Although the theological virtues come as a divine gift, Aquinas teaches that they are truly virtues in that they are abiding habits that direct our actions. It is true that we cannot acquire them on our own; but, at the same time, we must embrace the divine gift and nurture these virtues within ourselves in our choices and actions. We can look, for example, at a person who is able to remain positive and strong in their faith through great hardship and think: “Wow, she has a lot of faith. I wish that I had faith like that.” But it’s not that God generally hands out greater faith to one than another. It’s just that some people embrace and nurture their faith from day to day in the decisions that they make. When they need that faith, in the sense of maintaining it and growing in it through tough times, it is available to them. On the other hand, if we have not nurtured our faith by such things as prayer, sacraments, and spiritual reading, we ought not to be surprised if, in the face of great hardship, we seem to lack faith or feel in danger of losing it.
The Virtue of Faith
Christian faith is the virtue by which we come to know God and truths about God, especially as these are revealed to us in the Word of God, and specifically in Jesus Christ. It is an abiding acceptance by our minds of a type of knowing that is not the result of our simple observations or reasoning. Such knowledge is not contrary to what we can know by our natural thinking, but it concerns things that are beyond our intellect’s grasp. In faith, we believe that there is a God; we believe that God, especially in Jesus, is the fundamental truth of reality and of our human existence; and we believe that, again especially in Jesus, God reveals to us the way to live and to attain our eternal salvation. Because of what we know in faith, we come to trust, surrender, and seek an ever-deepening relationship with God in this life and in the next. More broadly, therefore, faith is a way of knowing, it is believing and belief, and it is trust and relationship with God. We see more clearly that mature Christian faith is intimately linked with the relationship of friendship with God which Aquinas believes is the central meaning of charity.
It is the light of faith, shining on the life and teaching of Jesus, that reveals the true contours of authentic human living, and thus the authentic shape of all of the virtues. The virtue of faith is, then, an abiding way of knowing and a sustained way of seeing God, self, other people, relationships, the created order, what constitutes authentic value, and what counts as worthy priorities. In faith, we see differently which goals are worthy of our pursuit and more urgent in attaining. In light of the life and teaching of Jesus, as it is passed on in the church, we consider in new ways which possible means of attaining our goals are truly appropriate and worthy. In every situation, we are enlightened to see other persons as brothers and sisters to us and equally worthy of our consideration and concern. We have a wider picture of what constitutes essential sources of counsel and guidance for our decision-making. In short, embracing and deepening the virtue of faith must necessarily shape the virtue of prudence.
We can see that the same is true for the impact of faith on justice, fortitude, temperance and their related virtues. The abiding knowledge and vision of faith changes our view of the nature, depth, and breadth of our responsibilities to and for other human beings. It widens our sense of the goals that are worthy of our pursuit even in the face of great difficulty and gives us new motivation and power to pursue them. It gives us a more magnanimous soul, yet bigger dreams and nobler goals, and a far greater reason for confidence in what can and should be accomplished. Because faith directs us toward a more transcendent goal for our lives—even as it leaves us firmly planted in this life as we find it—it redirects our desiring and understands differently what constitutes good measure and balance in our lives.
The Virtue of Hope
The theological virtue of hope is the abiding expectation that we can attain union with God and that God will give us the means and the help to do so. It is in the coming of Jesus, in his teachings and promises, and especially in his saving death and resurrection that we come to the surest hope. To know in faith who God is and to expect in hope to be with God awakens a deeper aspiration and resolve to set out, remain firm, and reach out for the divine assistance along the path. Hope doesn’t eliminate the recognition that our goal can be difficult to attain, and it certainly doesn’t mean that we won’t have our struggles along the way. But hope is what sees us through, opens us to God’s promised help, and keeps us faithfully on course, whatever may come.
Hope, born of faith and its distinctive vision, empowers us to see the present with an eye to the future. Hope in what God has promised and in the divine reign to come in its fullness unsettles our easy satisfaction in what we have and presently are, challenges us to see beyond the difficulties of the present, and empowers us to be agents of change in the world around us and in our lives and hearts. Again, the cardinal and their related virtues are further enlivened and shaped by hope. What is to be prudently pursued looks different in light of hope’s vision of the world to come and with expectation of what God can accomplish in and through us. Hope in God does not, by any means, eliminate the need for prudence; but the hope-filled form of the virtue is a prudence that sees worthier goals and new channels of (divine) assistance in their attainment. Hope unsettles our sense of contentment in the status quo of the world around us and sees new possibilities that justice alone cannot see. Hope gives new power to courage and worthier goals to pursue, even as it brings renewed and integrating desire for what God has promised and what God can do.
The Virtue of Charity
Saint Thomas tells us that the theological virtue of charity is friendship with God. The Scriptures make clear that, from the very beginning, God has invited men and women into intimate relationship. But there always remained the distance between the infinite God and the finite creature, as well as the obstacle of sin and its consequences. It is God who had to bridge the gap in order to make true friendship possible between divine and human. And so, in the incarnation by which God became human and through the reconciling action of Jesus in the cross and resurrection, friendship with God is made possible. God “comes down,” as it were; and, through baptism and the life of grace, we are raised up into friendship with God. Charity is the virtue by which we are able to receive God’s self-giving love and return that love in our own self-giving response.
In charity, we love God, and we love those God has created who bear the divine image and who are loved by God. For Aquinas, love of God and neighbor—as well as an authentic love for self—are fundamentally one love. They are inseparable. The Gospel and Letters of John make this abundantly clear: “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also” (1 John 4:20–21).
Charity is most clearly related to the virtue of justice. The virtue of justice moves us habitually to give to others what is owed to them. Charity moves us to give yet more than what is demanded in justice, because we come to realize a deeper and more profound bond with other persons as our brothers and sisters and as the beloved of God, created in the divine image. Charity is that friendship with God that reaches out in pursuit of friendship—the reciprocity of love—with other persons. Therefore, it necessarily transforms justice’s more narrow and restricted sense of relationship and mutual responsibilities. Justice, on its own, looks to give worldly, natural goods to others. Charity looks beyond to what God wants for all of us: our truest fulfillment together in union with the Trinity. Charity, then, “takes up” justice and moves us beyond “mere” justice; but charity does not thereby eliminate the virtue of justice, nor the need to pursue justice. Charity requires at least justice, and is not exhausted by it. But without justice, there can be no real charity.
Charity, teaches Saint Thomas, can increase in this life, not by adding “more,” but by becoming more intense. We can grow in our friendship with God, in our openness to receive and to give to God and to our sisters and brothers. This intensifying charity becomes, as Aquinas says it, the “form of the virtues.” By this, he means that when we have received the gift of the theological virtue of charity, it comes to fill, empower, shape, and direct all of our virtues to God. When we have charity, we live our life directed toward God, our ultimate end, and true fulfillment. And in this fundamental life direction and relationship, all of our other attitudes and dispositions come to be integrated and empowered. The natural, moral virtues attain their truest shape and completion.
Infused Moral Virtues
Saint Thomas teaches that, in addition to the theological virtues, God infuses moral virtues, which are parallel to our natural, acquired virtues, and so there are both natural and infused forms of each of the cardinal virtues. Fundamentally, this teaching is grounded in Aquinas’s thoroughly theological vision of the moral life, and more specifically in his view of the Christian life as a life lived in and empowered by grace. Through incorporation into Christ through baptism, thus filled with the divine presence in grace, we are truly transformed. In this sense, the infused moral virtues aren’t “add-ons” or supplements to a separate “natural” moral life. Rather, they are the divine gifts by which God enables the full unfolding of our humanity, including through our acquired moral virtues. The infused moral virtues, then, are not some parallel reality superimposed over our own moral dispositions. They are what animate, shape, and strengthen our dispositions and actions through our natural powers of intellect and will so that we can act in accord with the divine will for ourselves and for the world—which is to say, for our true good and for the good of those around us.
Ideally, our acquired and infused moral virtues work together. But this is not necessarily so; and examining this possibility can help us to understand the difference between them. Let’s say that I have developed the vice of back-biting (contrary to the virtue of justice)—that is, I have the nasty habit of gossiping about others behind their backs. I sincerely repent, confess my sin, and receive sacramental absolution. I leave the sacrament washed clean and renewed. With the new outpouring of grace, I receive the infused moral virtue of justice in speech about others. But, at a natural level, I still have the acquired vice of back-biting—the habitual disposition to speak ill of others behind their backs. I must work to overcome this vice. The infused moral virtue, as the abiding fruit of grace at work in my will, will help. Further, with the expansive vision of faith, infused justice in speech will offer me an expanded vision of the people about whom I might be tempted to speak—seeing them as truly brothers and sisters to me. It will give me a deeper love of truth as a reflection of God who is truth, and it will have a deeper appreciation of the relationship of my actions with my hope of union with God.
The infused moral virtues work in our natural faculties, as do the acquired virtues; but in their supernatural form, they may alter the operation of their acquired counterparts. Natural prudence and justice, for example, move us to act with a healthy concern for ourselves and others in the realm of normal human living. But infused prudence moves us to see our decisions in a larger perspective—with the eyes of faith—taking into account supernatural ends. With infused prudence, a young man or woman might rightly consider leaving a high-paying job and the promise of financial success to pursue a life of ministry. From a merely human prudence, the same decision might seem very imprudent indeed. Of course, infused prudence is still prudence. It must take into account many factors and possible consequences for multiple people. Infused prudence in this example does not replace or nullify acquired prudence. It takes it up and includes it, but places its considerations into a bigger or deeper perspective.
In the same way, while natural justice aims to give to others what is due to them, the infused virtue of justice sees a bigger picture of what we owe to others, including those things that would serve their spiritual welfare (and especially regarding those near and dear to us). Infused courage sees the goals that are worthy of sacrifice differently. And so we have not only the courage of soldiers who are willing to face death in order to protect their nation and its citizens, but we also have the courage of martyrs who face death for something intangible and transcendent, yet profoundly real and infinitely precious—eternal life. While acquired temperance moves us to healthy eating and proper sleep, infused temperance sees the value of occasional fasting and vigils. In short, the infused virtues are based on a faith vision that sees the human good more completely and so directs us to our true fulfillment as persons.
Gifts of the Holy Spirit
In addition to the theological and infused moral virtues, Aquinas teaches that the gifts of the Holy Spirit make us more docile to the promptings of grace. The seven gifts are wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. The theological and other infused virtues are gifts from God but operate within our own graced capacities, but the gifts of the Holy Spirit make us immediately open to the movements of the Spirit. In this way, they complete and perfect the virtues under the divine inspiration of the Holy Spirit. In fact, in the course of his reflection on the virtues, Aquinas assigns a gift to each theological and cardinal virtue as its particular source of completion. Such is the comprehensive and systematizing mind of Saint Thomas.
Divine and Human, Personal and Communal
Saint Thomas’s teaching on the infused and acquired virtues manifests the interconnection of divine action and human cooperation. God initiates, but we must respond. God offers; we must accept. At the same time, we must exert our own effort, but at the initiation and with the divine assistance. God loves and wills the ultimate happiness of all, but the divine love respects our freedom so that our response can truly be our own. In the divine plan, we need the gift of the theological and other infused virtues; and, at the same time, we need to exert our own effort in order to develop the acquired virtues, which will be taken up and perfected by the infused virtues. We must, with God’s help and with our own graced effort, choose our own fulfillment in divine union.
Aquinas provides his lengthy and profound teaching on the virtues and the moral life more generally in the second part of his three-part ST. In the first part, he had discussed God, creation, the human, and the divine governance. In the third part, he moves on to discuss the saving work of Christ and the sacraments. (In fact, Saint Thomas died without having completed the ST, and some of his students prepared what is now called the Supplement, which concludes his teaching on specific sacraments and the life to come after death.) This arrangement is traditionally understood to reflect a vision of life as coming forth from God and our response (or return) to God through the moral life and the sacramental and spiritual life. The virtues, infused and acquired, fit into the divine plan by which we respond and return to God.
Since we depend so essentially on divine gift and aid, it becomes clear immediately why growth in virtue depends on prayer. The infused virtues come as gifts, an unfolding of God’s own gracious presence. Our embrace of these gifts and the intensity of our acceptance of them depends on the openness to God that is the essence of prayer. At the same time, even the hard work of growing in the acquired virtues is dependent on the grace that empowers us and sustains us in the task. And so too, the acquired virtues are supported by prayer in their development, strengthening, and acting. It is in personal prayer and in communal prayer, especially in the sacramental life of the church, that we become more docile and receptive to the divine help and gift. As prayer (and thus, our relationship with God) deepens, our transformation in Christ becomes more profound and widens to new areas, with greater vigor and understanding. The more regular and profound our encounter and communion with God in Christ, the more we are able to embrace the infused virtues and to build our natural virtues.
But, at the same time, it must be said that the life of deep and sustained prayer can only grow in the soil prepared by the life of virtue. This is most evident in the case of the theological virtues, which are the divine gifts by which we are directed to God. Prayer, as we have seen, can be understood as an act of the natural virtue of religion; but the real depth of prayer depends on the relationship with God made possible and dynamic through grace and the theological virtues. The acquired virtues, for their part, order our desiring, our choices, our fundamental attitudes and dispositions, and so our relationships and way of being, so that we can find within ourselves the inner harmony and balance which deep prayer requires. We cannot truly encounter God and deepen our friendship with the divine when our actions, priorities, and attitudes run contrary to the divine will and being. But even more deeply, the virtues order our intellect and will, as well as our desiring as directed by them, and only in that way can we truly and deeply respond to God with the true depth of our freedom in our prayerful self-surrender to God, as well as in our choosing and acting.
Prayer and virtue must walk hand-in-hand. They depend on one another. They enrich one another. Each cannot truly exist without the other. Growing in virtues, acquired and infused, depends on the grace that becomes more effective through the receptivity of deepening prayer. Growth in prayer and in union with God depends on a life more and more conformed to God in our interior dispositions and in our external relationships and choices.
To acknowledge the necessity of communal, sacramental prayer, as well as personal prayer, reminds us that we are relational beings. The life of Christian faith is a communal reality. Our personal prayer in Christ always exists in the context of the praying church—the body of Christ, of which we are members. And so too, the life of virtues, infused and acquired, exists in the context of relationships and communities around us. Men and women, living the life of virtue, form human communities more worthy of human persons. Virtuous people make for communities of virtue, and communities of virtue form virtuous people. We are aided by the example of others, whether these are the living human beings we see around us, or the saints who have passed to the next life but who live with us still. As Christians, we see that growth in virtues, acquired and infused, requires our active participation in the life and prayer of the living Christian community, animated by the Spirit and centered in Christ.
The virtuous lives of Jesus, the Blessed Virgin, and the saints guide us and encourage us. The example and counsel of good people around us in the context of the community of faith fortify us, as we hope that our lives will do for them. Christian parents, grandparents, and other elders mentor us. The teachers in the church instruct us. The rich stories, powerful images, challenging parables, and wise teachings of the Scriptures form us. The liturgical and devotional life and prayer of the church nurture us. The sacraments sustain us. And, for our part, through our active participation in the life of the church, we contribute to the virtuous and prayerful lives of our sisters and brothers.
In the World in Which God Has Placed Us
The natural moral virtues which have been the principal focus of this book can be fully understood only in the larger picture of the Christian life. And yet they are a distinct element of the Christian and human life well-lived. Studying them separately, as Aquinas did and as we have done, gives us a clearer picture of the path to our fullest humanity. To say that there is a larger picture does not lessen the value of a more narrow examination of essential foundations of the moral life.
Christians today do not live in a Christian ghetto, cut off from the larger society which is no longer fundamentally Christian. Our world today is characterized by pluralism at virtually every level. We Christians live in the contemporary world as the leaven and witnesses of the reign of God, which God will finally and ultimately bring about. We must strive to be witnesses to the good news. The Catholic vision, as the Second Vatican Council made clear, is a life of active engagement in the world and participation in shared efforts to make the world more worthy of our humanity.
We must live in the world as it is and in dialogue with those around us in order to contribute to a shared life that is more authentically human. The fact that people are not Christian in no way denies that they can in fact live a more authentically human life than those who claim Christian faith. It is abundantly clear that people without Christian faith and with no religious faith at all can be women and men of profound natural virtue, solid good intention, and concrete action for the good of others. We Christians can often learn from them, even though we believe that the most authentic vision of what it means to be human and to serve the true good of other persons cannot be attained without faith.
Many older readers of this book (like its author) grew up in a society in which people believed that some actions are right or wrong regardless of anyone’s opinion about them—actions like direct abortion and sex outside of marriage. In other words, we say that people used to believe in “objective truth” and “objective good.” But the world has changed. Younger readers of this book have grown up in a world in which what is right depends on the views of the individual person performing any particular action. In view of a majority in our society, it is no longer possible to say that sex outside of marriage is simply wrong. Rather, it depends on how the two “consenting adults” view the meaning of their action. In other words, it is a world of “subjectivism” in which each subject largely determines what is right or wrong for him or herself.
While it is true that Aquinas’s teaching on the virtues presupposes belief in an objective order and a larger vision of what leads us to authentic human fulfillment, his teaching on acquired virtues can be a bridge to moral consensus in our pluralistic society. In its foundation, his understanding of virtue is rooted in ancient Greek philosophy, which sought to promote a good human society comprised of people of virtue. Even if Christian faith suggests that the vision of pagan philosophers was necessarily incomplete, we cannot deny their fundamental human genius. Our goal may be the transformation of the world in and for Christ, but agreement on the dispositions that should mark good human persons and healthy human interactions would be no small human achievement in line with that more transcendent goal.
The effort to promote men and women of solid virtue, working for a society which is more worthy of human persons, is a profoundly Christian task. As we keep our eyes on the fullest picture of what our humanity means, we can also offer Saint Thomas Aquinas’s Christian and human vision of the human life of virtue as an important contribution to the task. Our own efforts as women and men of virtue in our lives and in the little worlds in which we actually live is the proper task of the followers of Jesus, truly divine and extraordinarily human.