I. THE THEOLOGICAL VIRTUES IN GENERAL
Our study of the virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit will focus on the constitutive (essential) elements for Christian perfection. We need to note that although all virtues help with perfection, yet the model of each active virtue in each person is determined by his/her calling or state in life, also by the charism of each individual. Thus we come across saints who practised heroic virtues, urged by the same Holy Spirit, yet different from one another in their model of sanctity.
These virtues are called theological because they enable a person to connect directly with God. These three virtues are the Christian virtues par excellence. Nothing is as important as faith, hope and love, because their presence or absence means heaven or hell, eternal life or eternal death, and there is no distinction more important than this.
Faith, hope and love are the three legs of a tripod that support the whole of our Christian life. Each leg depends on and needs the others. Faith without the works of love is dead. Love that is not guided by faith is not love, agape, but only feelings and sentimentalism, easily shaken by one’s whim. Hope without faith is but empty optimism. Optimism is not the same as hope, so that pessimists may possess strong hope. These three virtues form the basis for all Christian virtues. Honesty, truth, patience, purity, self-mastery, even love of neighbour, all are the effects of the presence of God who is first present in our hearts, and this presence can only come through faith, hope and love. We do not practise virtues in order to go to heaven, but we practise them because heaven is already within us.
It is very important that we come back to this basis, because modern people do not understand this. We live in a post-Christian era, a modern paganism, and many people are not aware of this. The present-day world is the reverse of the three theological virtues, and egotism is the mainstay of people’s lives today, not faith, hope and love. This world sees faith as something naïve, hope as a waking dream and love as weakness. We see materialism flourishing all around us, which is no more than lack of faith: we see also a growing number suicides and depressives, which are an expression of despair. We also see the spread of the philosophy that says ‘so long as I am happy and lucky’, which renders love complete foolishness.
No one can become good without the grace of God. Without love, justice becomes cruelty. Without hope, courage becomes fury. Without faith all worldly wisdom is just pure foolishness in the sight of God.
II. FAITH
Faith is like the root of a plant, hope is its stem and love its flower. The flower is the most beautiful part, the stem makes the plant grow, but there must be a root first. What is faith?
Faith in the biblical sense of saving faith is the action whereby we receive eternal life. “God loved the world so much…that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). Faith is the fundamental ‘yes’ in reply to God, given wholeheartedly, with all our will and all our being. In this sense believing means accepting God Himself. Thus our faith is directed first of all towards God, towards the person of God. By giving this reply in faith, I believe and surrender myself to God. This is what is known as ‘primary faith’. Thus this faith leads us first of all to enter into a personal relationship with God.
Because I believe in God, I also believe whatever God says or commands. This is secondary faith. Secondary faith must be founded on primary faith, but primary faith must be expressed in secondary faith, so that it does not remain a purely intellectual understanding.
Faith is the basis of obedience. Abraham obeyed God, because he believed, thus he is known as the father of all the faithful. On the contrary, the first fall in the Garden of Eden is the sin against faith. Basically, Eve believes the lying serpent more that she does God. Thus she was not obedient.
St Paul says that “every act done in bad faith is a sin” (Rm 14:23). Faith is the ‘yes’ in reply to God, whereas sin is really a ‘no’ to God. Faith is the opposite of sin.
Faith also may be understood in a narrower sense, that is, as an intellectual assent motivated by the will to all the truths revealed by God. This is secondary faith, as we read in the old catechism and which for a long time coloured Catholic theology. This understanding is based on the teaching of St. James (Jm 2:14-25), that faith without good works is dead.
There is also another kind of faith mentioned by St. Paul, which is a gift of the Holy Spirit. This is a special kind of faith, which brings about miracles and is called the gift of faith (see: the book, Growing in the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, ch.6, The Gift of Faith).
The greatest mistake of our day, which has also infected Christians, is to make of faith a subjective and psychological matter. Truth becomes only ‘my truth’. Both the Bible and common sense tell us the contrary. We must adapt to truth, not the other way round. We must be honest. There is only one honest reason why we must believe and that is because it is the truth. God has spoken and acted. Now he awaits my reply. What is my reply? Yes or no? If yes, then I shall live, if no, then I shall die. Really, faith is very simple: only say yes to God.
III. HOPE
No one lives without hope. To be a human being is to grow all the time. We are all spiritual babies. And those who are most mature among us are the first to admit this. Hope is the life of the soul. A soul that has no hope is a dead soul. Just as the body dies if the soul leaves it, so also the soul dies if the source of its life disappears. The source of its life is its spirit, which motivates it to live and to die, namely, hope. Without hope the soul cannot live.
In times of hope, people look up into the sky and see ‘heaven’. In times of despair people call it ‘space’. Emptiness has taken the place of fullness. If our ancestors were able to ‘hear heavenly music’, now people only hear ‘the fearful silence of space’.
Today people often equate hope with a vague desire: ‘how good it would be if…’. But Christian hope is not a desire or feeling, but a sure conviction, a strong guarantee. We bury our dead brothers and sisters in the hope of the resurrection. Christian hope is the house built on rock, namely, Christ Himself. Hope does not come from ourselves, is not created by us. Hope is the positive reply to God’s promises, because we know that God is true and faithful and will certainly keep His promises. “Hope is not deceptive, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts” (Rm 5:5).
The object of our hope is God Himself. In this too we must be aware that the initiative always comes from God. If we seek God, it is “because He has first sought us” (1Jn 4:19). That is why hope is our reply to His promises. That is why hope is clear and specific, not something vague, since God’s promises are clear and specific, even though they must be accepted in faith. Hope rests on the Word of God that expresses His promises.
Our God is the God of promises and He keeps all His promises literally, so that these promises may be fulfilled. According to the Bible, truth is a historical reality. The Messiah is not just an understanding, but a Person. Creation, the fall, the incarnation, death and resurrection and ascension into heaven, Pentecost, the second coming, are not just myths or mere symbols, but actual events. Truth is something dramatic, something that happens and we can see it. Thus St. John begins his first letter with the words full of wonder and respect for the mystery of the incarnation: “Something which has existed since the beginning, that we have heard, and we have seen with our own eyes; that we have watched and touched with our hands: the Word, who is life – this is our subject: (1 Jn 1:1).
Hope means that my implicit desire for God, no matter how dark or unconscious, is God’s own imprint in me, because basically I am “created in God’s own image and likeness” (Gn 1:26). Hope means, that the urge of the desire for the happiness that the world cannot give, is a sure sign that I have been created for a Person who is Happiness Itself, and only He. We can never exaggerate the meaning of hope, because the alternative is despair.
IV. LOVE
Love is the greatest reality in this universe (cf 1 Cor 13:13). The Bible never mentions that God is truth, justice or beauty, even though God truly is true, just and beautiful. But “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8.16). Love is God’s essence, His whole Being is Love. Everything in Him is love, even His justice is love.
Love, or agape in Greek, is not a matter of feelings. Feelings are shallow and changing, but agape, according to the Bible, comes from the heart, that is from the deepest centre of our being.
Love is friendship between God and human beings, and thus creates mutual communication. Thus love presupposes sanctifying grace that makes us children of God.
Love is the permanent ability poured by God into our will, by means of which we love God above all else for Himself. Love is directed first to God and then to self and others. We love God because He is the highest good and the final end of our lives.
Love is the noblest virtue, not just because it unites us with God, but also because it is the bond that perfects all other virtues. Love is much greater than the other two theological virtues, namely, faith and hope, even though in this world it is always accompanied by faith and hope. Love is in the will. Indeed, of its nature reason is nobler than the will because people cannot know what is unknowable. But the aim of reason is different from that of the will. Reason draws all things to itself or absorbs them into its intellectual mould. Consequently, if what is known is of a lower level, such as material things, reason raises this to an intellectual level. But if it knows objects of higher levels, such as divine truth or God, it draws these into its limited intellectual mould.
The opposite happens with the will. Because of the act of love, the will rests in God. In keeping with its characteristic, that is, to love, the will rests in the object loved. Hence when the will loves things of a lower level, that is worldly things, it lowers its own status. However, if it loves what is of a higher level, such as God, then the will is elevated to the level of the loved object, where it rests in love. That is why St. Augustine could say: “If you love the world, you become worldly; but if you love God, what can we say but that you become divine?”
That is why in this world to love God is nobler than to know God. A theologian may study and know much about God, but only intellectually, whereas a simple person who hardly knows anything about theology, can love God deeply, and the latter is far better.
Another practical conclusion may be drawn from this noble teaching. The only way of not lowering ourselves because of loving lower creatures, is to love in God, through God and for God. In other words we must own them because of love. Love can change everything it touches, even the meanest objects lower than ourselves, but which through love are directed to the praise of God. Love lends divine value to all that it touches.
In this life love can grow, because love is movement towards God, our final end. So long as love is on its journey, we can always grow closer to our aim. Drawing closer to this aim is precisely the work of love. Besides, love can grow continually and without limits in this world. This does not mean that love cannot achieve relative perfection, as we have seen earlier.
Love can grow not by adding to its quantity but because it is rooted ever deeper in its subject. Thus, so that love may grow, greater or deeper acts of love are required, more than just one’s habitus (the habitual ability to act).
There is one practical conclusion that we can draw from all this. People who live feverishly and carelessly can incapacitate their whole Christian life, even when they live in grace and perform many good deeds. Many who live in God’s grace, not committing any great wrongs, even performing many good deeds, nevertheless may still be far from being holy. If they experience some challenge or difficulty, they become angry; if they are short of something, their complaint rises to heaven. If their superiors order something that they do not like, they complain and moan. If they are criticised or insulted, they cannot forgive or forget. All these show that they are still very far from being perfect.
How can this be explained when these people perform so many good deeds and have served God for so long? The explanation is very simple: that they have performed many good deeds is true, but they have performed these in a feverish state. And they do not perform these deeds in such a way that each new action is accompanied by greater enthusiasm. On the contrary as time goes by their enthusiasm grows less and is less perfect. They are still as feverish as when they began. Love is not only directed towards God, but also towards the neighbour. The love of God leads us to love all that is in God’s possession, or that proclaims God’s goodness. And it is clear that our neighbour is God’s possession and shares in God’s goodness. We love our neighbour with the same love that we love God. These are not two loves, but only one love that has two objects.
Copyrighted @ Holy Trinity Community, Indonesia
Our study of the virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit will focus on the constitutive (essential) elements for Christian perfection. We need to note that although all virtues help with perfection, yet the model of each active virtue in each person is determined by his/her calling or state in life, also by the charism of each individual. Thus we come across saints who practised heroic virtues, urged by the same Holy Spirit, yet different from one another in their model of sanctity.
These virtues are called theological because they enable a person to connect directly with God. These three virtues are the Christian virtues par excellence. Nothing is as important as faith, hope and love, because their presence or absence means heaven or hell, eternal life or eternal death, and there is no distinction more important than this.
Faith, hope and love are the three legs of a tripod that support the whole of our Christian life. Each leg depends on and needs the others. Faith without the works of love is dead. Love that is not guided by faith is not love, agape, but only feelings and sentimentalism, easily shaken by one’s whim. Hope without faith is but empty optimism. Optimism is not the same as hope, so that pessimists may possess strong hope. These three virtues form the basis for all Christian virtues. Honesty, truth, patience, purity, self-mastery, even love of neighbour, all are the effects of the presence of God who is first present in our hearts, and this presence can only come through faith, hope and love. We do not practise virtues in order to go to heaven, but we practise them because heaven is already within us.
It is very important that we come back to this basis, because modern people do not understand this. We live in a post-Christian era, a modern paganism, and many people are not aware of this. The present-day world is the reverse of the three theological virtues, and egotism is the mainstay of people’s lives today, not faith, hope and love. This world sees faith as something naïve, hope as a waking dream and love as weakness. We see materialism flourishing all around us, which is no more than lack of faith: we see also a growing number suicides and depressives, which are an expression of despair. We also see the spread of the philosophy that says ‘so long as I am happy and lucky’, which renders love complete foolishness.
No one can become good without the grace of God. Without love, justice becomes cruelty. Without hope, courage becomes fury. Without faith all worldly wisdom is just pure foolishness in the sight of God.
II. FAITH
Faith is like the root of a plant, hope is its stem and love its flower. The flower is the most beautiful part, the stem makes the plant grow, but there must be a root first. What is faith?
Faith in the biblical sense of saving faith is the action whereby we receive eternal life. “God loved the world so much…that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). Faith is the fundamental ‘yes’ in reply to God, given wholeheartedly, with all our will and all our being. In this sense believing means accepting God Himself. Thus our faith is directed first of all towards God, towards the person of God. By giving this reply in faith, I believe and surrender myself to God. This is what is known as ‘primary faith’. Thus this faith leads us first of all to enter into a personal relationship with God.
Because I believe in God, I also believe whatever God says or commands. This is secondary faith. Secondary faith must be founded on primary faith, but primary faith must be expressed in secondary faith, so that it does not remain a purely intellectual understanding.
Faith is the basis of obedience. Abraham obeyed God, because he believed, thus he is known as the father of all the faithful. On the contrary, the first fall in the Garden of Eden is the sin against faith. Basically, Eve believes the lying serpent more that she does God. Thus she was not obedient.
St Paul says that “every act done in bad faith is a sin” (Rm 14:23). Faith is the ‘yes’ in reply to God, whereas sin is really a ‘no’ to God. Faith is the opposite of sin.
Faith also may be understood in a narrower sense, that is, as an intellectual assent motivated by the will to all the truths revealed by God. This is secondary faith, as we read in the old catechism and which for a long time coloured Catholic theology. This understanding is based on the teaching of St. James (Jm 2:14-25), that faith without good works is dead.
There is also another kind of faith mentioned by St. Paul, which is a gift of the Holy Spirit. This is a special kind of faith, which brings about miracles and is called the gift of faith (see: the book, Growing in the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, ch.6, The Gift of Faith).
The greatest mistake of our day, which has also infected Christians, is to make of faith a subjective and psychological matter. Truth becomes only ‘my truth’. Both the Bible and common sense tell us the contrary. We must adapt to truth, not the other way round. We must be honest. There is only one honest reason why we must believe and that is because it is the truth. God has spoken and acted. Now he awaits my reply. What is my reply? Yes or no? If yes, then I shall live, if no, then I shall die. Really, faith is very simple: only say yes to God.
III. HOPE
No one lives without hope. To be a human being is to grow all the time. We are all spiritual babies. And those who are most mature among us are the first to admit this. Hope is the life of the soul. A soul that has no hope is a dead soul. Just as the body dies if the soul leaves it, so also the soul dies if the source of its life disappears. The source of its life is its spirit, which motivates it to live and to die, namely, hope. Without hope the soul cannot live.
In times of hope, people look up into the sky and see ‘heaven’. In times of despair people call it ‘space’. Emptiness has taken the place of fullness. If our ancestors were able to ‘hear heavenly music’, now people only hear ‘the fearful silence of space’.
Today people often equate hope with a vague desire: ‘how good it would be if…’. But Christian hope is not a desire or feeling, but a sure conviction, a strong guarantee. We bury our dead brothers and sisters in the hope of the resurrection. Christian hope is the house built on rock, namely, Christ Himself. Hope does not come from ourselves, is not created by us. Hope is the positive reply to God’s promises, because we know that God is true and faithful and will certainly keep His promises. “Hope is not deceptive, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts” (Rm 5:5).
The object of our hope is God Himself. In this too we must be aware that the initiative always comes from God. If we seek God, it is “because He has first sought us” (1Jn 4:19). That is why hope is our reply to His promises. That is why hope is clear and specific, not something vague, since God’s promises are clear and specific, even though they must be accepted in faith. Hope rests on the Word of God that expresses His promises.
Our God is the God of promises and He keeps all His promises literally, so that these promises may be fulfilled. According to the Bible, truth is a historical reality. The Messiah is not just an understanding, but a Person. Creation, the fall, the incarnation, death and resurrection and ascension into heaven, Pentecost, the second coming, are not just myths or mere symbols, but actual events. Truth is something dramatic, something that happens and we can see it. Thus St. John begins his first letter with the words full of wonder and respect for the mystery of the incarnation: “Something which has existed since the beginning, that we have heard, and we have seen with our own eyes; that we have watched and touched with our hands: the Word, who is life – this is our subject: (1 Jn 1:1).
Hope means that my implicit desire for God, no matter how dark or unconscious, is God’s own imprint in me, because basically I am “created in God’s own image and likeness” (Gn 1:26). Hope means, that the urge of the desire for the happiness that the world cannot give, is a sure sign that I have been created for a Person who is Happiness Itself, and only He. We can never exaggerate the meaning of hope, because the alternative is despair.
IV. LOVE
Love is the greatest reality in this universe (cf 1 Cor 13:13). The Bible never mentions that God is truth, justice or beauty, even though God truly is true, just and beautiful. But “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8.16). Love is God’s essence, His whole Being is Love. Everything in Him is love, even His justice is love.
Love, or agape in Greek, is not a matter of feelings. Feelings are shallow and changing, but agape, according to the Bible, comes from the heart, that is from the deepest centre of our being.
Love is friendship between God and human beings, and thus creates mutual communication. Thus love presupposes sanctifying grace that makes us children of God.
Love is the permanent ability poured by God into our will, by means of which we love God above all else for Himself. Love is directed first to God and then to self and others. We love God because He is the highest good and the final end of our lives.
Love is the noblest virtue, not just because it unites us with God, but also because it is the bond that perfects all other virtues. Love is much greater than the other two theological virtues, namely, faith and hope, even though in this world it is always accompanied by faith and hope. Love is in the will. Indeed, of its nature reason is nobler than the will because people cannot know what is unknowable. But the aim of reason is different from that of the will. Reason draws all things to itself or absorbs them into its intellectual mould. Consequently, if what is known is of a lower level, such as material things, reason raises this to an intellectual level. But if it knows objects of higher levels, such as divine truth or God, it draws these into its limited intellectual mould.
The opposite happens with the will. Because of the act of love, the will rests in God. In keeping with its characteristic, that is, to love, the will rests in the object loved. Hence when the will loves things of a lower level, that is worldly things, it lowers its own status. However, if it loves what is of a higher level, such as God, then the will is elevated to the level of the loved object, where it rests in love. That is why St. Augustine could say: “If you love the world, you become worldly; but if you love God, what can we say but that you become divine?”
That is why in this world to love God is nobler than to know God. A theologian may study and know much about God, but only intellectually, whereas a simple person who hardly knows anything about theology, can love God deeply, and the latter is far better.
Another practical conclusion may be drawn from this noble teaching. The only way of not lowering ourselves because of loving lower creatures, is to love in God, through God and for God. In other words we must own them because of love. Love can change everything it touches, even the meanest objects lower than ourselves, but which through love are directed to the praise of God. Love lends divine value to all that it touches.
In this life love can grow, because love is movement towards God, our final end. So long as love is on its journey, we can always grow closer to our aim. Drawing closer to this aim is precisely the work of love. Besides, love can grow continually and without limits in this world. This does not mean that love cannot achieve relative perfection, as we have seen earlier.
Love can grow not by adding to its quantity but because it is rooted ever deeper in its subject. Thus, so that love may grow, greater or deeper acts of love are required, more than just one’s habitus (the habitual ability to act).
There is one practical conclusion that we can draw from all this. People who live feverishly and carelessly can incapacitate their whole Christian life, even when they live in grace and perform many good deeds. Many who live in God’s grace, not committing any great wrongs, even performing many good deeds, nevertheless may still be far from being holy. If they experience some challenge or difficulty, they become angry; if they are short of something, their complaint rises to heaven. If their superiors order something that they do not like, they complain and moan. If they are criticised or insulted, they cannot forgive or forget. All these show that they are still very far from being perfect.
How can this be explained when these people perform so many good deeds and have served God for so long? The explanation is very simple: that they have performed many good deeds is true, but they have performed these in a feverish state. And they do not perform these deeds in such a way that each new action is accompanied by greater enthusiasm. On the contrary as time goes by their enthusiasm grows less and is less perfect. They are still as feverish as when they began. Love is not only directed towards God, but also towards the neighbour. The love of God leads us to love all that is in God’s possession, or that proclaims God’s goodness. And it is clear that our neighbour is God’s possession and shares in God’s goodness. We love our neighbour with the same love that we love God. These are not two loves, but only one love that has two objects.
Copyrighted @ Holy Trinity Community, Indonesia