My 2021 New Year’s resolution is to write a book! I have decided to summarize my 300+ blogs written between 2013 and 2020 into a book which tells my journey of how scripture reading has helped my growth in Christian virtual. The primary purpose is to share my journey with my family and friends, to leave a little legacy. The idea is to use the framework of virtues and to illustrate with blogs that highlight what I learned from scripture and my reflections that pointed me to these virtues.
What are blogs and how did it all begin? I initially just thought of blogs as a replacement for personal diary (blogs = web-logs). English is my second language and my first training was in engineering and writing is not my natural skill and is definitely not my favorite activity. Since becoming a serious Christian it has been my regular discipline to read scripture daily and to reflect and to pray about the insight I received which I believe is from the Holy Spirit. I wanted a means of documenting these to go back to later in life. My career as a full time faculty in Medicine was always a constant struggle in terms of finding a balance between my work, family and spiritual life. In 2013, at the peak of my career, I decided to take a 20% income cut to devote one day a week to provide me with the time I needed for my spiritual life. "Scriptural Gleaning" was born. The idea of gleaning from scripture is not original (see What Is Gleaning in the Bible? Does it Still Apply Today? and also Leviticus 19:9). It describes very well my approach to scripture reading. When I open the bible I often feel like Ruth begging the servants of Boaz in Ruth 2:7,"Please, let me glean and gather among the sheaves behind the reapers...". But it turns out if you google "scriptural gleaning" with the quotes, my blogspot posts will come up on top (in fact the top 3 search returns are all mine)! I decided to make my blogs public, mostly to be able to share with my own brother in Hong Kong and another high-school buddy of mine. Very few people (usually anonymous) follow my posts. Occasionally it brought delight to my soul knowing that my reflection had helped someone else, like this one from Debbie: "Thank you for sharing this information. One of my dearest, heartfelt verses in the Bible is Psalm 46:10. The Lord revealed it to me during one of the most difficult times in my life and it changed me forever!" (from the post "Who were the sons of Korah?".
It has been seven years and 302 posts later. It's time to evaluate whether this discipline has made any difference in my spiritual growth, and hence This Book. To facilitate the organization of posts into these chapters of Virtues, I decided to use "tags" in WordPress (see The Right Way to Tag Your Blog Posts). I had wanted to move out of Bloggers.com (owned by Google) to my own personal WordPress server (in my basement!). So I will read through all my posts again within this year and tag them with "Virtue" tags (one post may point to a number of virtues). I will then pick the posts that are most pertinent and with some evidence that it has help increase my virtue.
So what are virtues?
What are the 4 Cardinal Virtues?
Quotes from Learned Religions: “The cardinal virtues are the four principal moral virtues. The English word cardinal comes from the Latin word cardo, which means “hinge.” All other virtues hinge on these four: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. Plato first discussed the cardinal virtues in the Republic, and they entered into Christian teaching by way of Plato’s disciple Aristotle. Unlike the theological virtues, which are the gifts of God through grace, the four cardinal virtues can be practiced by anyone; thus, they represent the foundation of natural morality.“
Richert, Scott P. “What Are the 4 Cardinal Virtues?” Learn Religions, Aug. 28, 2020, learnreligions.com/the-cardinal-virtues-542142.
Prudence: The First Cardinal Virtue
“St. Thomas Aquinas ranked prudence as the first cardinal virtue because it is concerned with the intellect. Aristotle defined prudence as recta ratio agibilium, “right reason applied to practice.” It is the virtue that allows us to judge correctly what is right and what is wrong in any given situation. When we mistake the evil for the good, we are not exercising prudence—in fact, we are showing our lack of it. Because it is so easy to fall into error, prudence requires us to seek the counsel of others, particularly those we know to be sound judges of morality. Disregarding the advice or warnings of others whose judgment does not coincide with ours is a sign of imprudence.“
Justice: The Second Cardinal Virtue
“Justice, according to Saint Thomas, is the second cardinal virtue, because it is concerned with the will. As Fr. John A. Hardon notes in his Modern Catholic Dictionary, it is “the constant and permanent determination to give everyone his or her rightful due.” We say that “justice is blind,” because it should not matter what we think of a particular person. If we owe him a debt, we must repay exactly what we owe. Justice is connected to the idea of rights. While we often use justice in a negative sense (“He got what he deserved”), justice in its proper sense is positive. Injustice occurs when we as individuals or by law deprive someone of that which he is owed. Legal rights can never outweigh natural ones.“
Fortitude: The Third Cardinal Virtue
“The third cardinal virtue, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, is fortitude. While this virtue is commonly called courage, it is different from what much of what we think of as courage today. Fortitude allows us to overcome fear and to remain steady in our will in the face of obstacles, but it is always reasoned and reasonable; the person exercising fortitude does not seek danger for danger’s sake. Prudence and justice are the virtues through which we decide what needs to be done; fortitude gives us the strength to do it. Fortitude is the only one of the cardinal virtues that is also a gift of the Holy Spirit, allowing us to rise above our natural fears in defense of the Christian faith.”
Temperance: The Fourth Cardinal Virtue
“Temperance, Saint Thomas declared, is the fourth and final cardinal virtue. While fortitude is concerned with the restraint of fear so that we can act, temperance is the restraint of our desires or passions. Food, drink, and sex are all necessary for our survival, individually and as a species; yet a disordered desire for any of these goods can have disastrous consequences, physical and moral. Temperance is the virtue that attempts to keep us from excess, and, as such, requires the balancing of legitimate goods against our inordinate desire for them. Our legitimate use of such goods may be different at different times; temperance is the “golden mean” that helps us determine how far we can act on our desires.“
Faith, Hope, and Charity: the Three Theological Virtues
Catholicism also traditionally enumerates a second set of virtues: the theological virtues. “These are considered to be gifts of grace from God—they are given to us freely, not through any action on our part, and we are free, but not required, to accept and use them. These are the virtues by which man relates to God Himself—they are faith, hope, and charity (or love). While these terms have a common secular meaning that everyone is familiar with, in Catholic theology they take on special meanings… “
Richert, Scott P. “Faith, Hope, and Charity: the Three Theological Virtues.” Learn Religions, Aug. 27, 2020, learnreligions.com/what-are-the-theological-virtues-542106.
“The first mention of these three virtues occurs in the biblical book of 1 Corinthians 13:13, written by the Apostle Paul, where he identifies the three virtues and pinpoints charity as the most important of the three. The definitions of the three virtues were further clarified by the Catholic philosopher Thomas Aquinas many hundreds of years later, in the medieval period, where Aquinas defined faith, hope, and charity as theological virtues that defined mankind’s ideal relationship to God. The meanings set forth by Thomas Aquinas in the 1200s are the definitions of faith, hope, and charity that are still integral to modern Catholic theology. “
Faith
“Faith is a common term in ordinary language, but for Catholics, faith as a theological virtue takes on a special definition. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, theological faith is the virtue “by which the intellect is perfected by a supernatural light.” By this definition, faith is not at all contrary to reason or intellect but is the natural result of an intellect that is influenced by the supernatural truth given to us by God.”
Hope
“In Catholic custom, hope has as its object eternal union with God in the afterlife. The Concise Catholic Encyclopedia defines hope as “the theological virtue which is a supernatural gift bestowed by God through which one trusts God will grant eternal life and the means of obtaining it providing one cooperates.” In the virtue of hope, desire and expectation are united, even while there is recognition of the great difficulty of overcoming obstacles in order to achieve everlasting union with God.”
Charity (Love)
“Charity, or love, is considered the greatest of the theological virtues for Catholics. The Modern Catholic Dictionary defines it as the “infused supernatural virtue by which a person loves God above all things for his [that is, God’s] own sake, and loves others for God’s sake.” As is true of all the theological virtues, genuine charity is an act of free will, but because charity is a gift from God, we cannot initially acquire this virtue by our own actions. God must first give it to us as a gift before we can exercise it.“
Other Sets of Values, Rules, and Concepts
In addition, Christian Catholic practices and customs enumerate also other sets of values, rules, and concepts. Among these are the Ten Commandments, the Eight Beatitudes, the Twelve Fruits of the Holy Spirit, the Seven Sacraments, the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the Seven Deadly Sins.
