From the desk of the pastor for Oct. 27, 2024

The Lord be with you! Our next piece of theology is the concept of virtue. Exploring this term will illuminate how the Church understands our human nature and how grace restores and improves us. Learning to love like God causes us to be like God.

The English word, "virtue," comes from the Latin "virtus," which means "manliness" first and "greatness" second. In Latin the best example of "virtus" would be a Hercules. The Greeks had a better concept, "areth," which denotes "excellence." For the Church virtue denotes a human excellence that disposes us to be and act in an excellent manner.

What does it mean to be disposed to act in a good manner, let alone an excellent one? Our emotions and usual thinking are what dispose us to act. We must make a clear distinction between what we are inclined to do and what we choose to do. When I was a young man, I wanted to do everything that my Dad did. When he taught me to serve Mass, my Dad disposed me to want to do that as well. After doing it a for a while - actually being told to do it by my Dad - I started to enjoy it. How good I am at celebrating Mass is partly because I developed a virtue of reverence from serving on the altar.

The more virtuous we are, the more free we are. The more our actions are disposed to what we know is good, the more our intellect and will can know and desire the good. As Pope Saint John Paul II often reminded the Church, love frees the human person from the brokenness of our isolated selves.

Grace helps us to grow in virtue and thus regenerate our humanity. Due to Original Sin, every human being has flaws that would lead us away from what is good (God) and to what only appears good (sin). Moreover, sin can be understood to be a corrupted human act that disposes us to abandon what is really good for what seems good at the time. God, who is the source of all goodness, offers us the grace of contrition whenever we sin in order to free us from such a fate. Tragically, the more we sin, the less we are inclined to repent and restore ourselves to health.

The canonized saints demonstrated on earth the heroic virtue that will be all of ours in Heaven. As Mother Teresa of Calcutta showed so well in her life, the entire world can be changed by the actions of single human life made whole by Christ. May we all desire the change that comes from loving God!

In His Sacred Heart,
Fr. John

Last week our business manager, Melissa Wensing, left St. Thomas More's employment. We will miss her and wish her and her family all the best. As such transitions are never easy, please pray for her and her family that God rewards them for all the good she did here.