FALSE VIRTUE AND REAL VICE

Friday after the Third Sunday in Lent

It’s pretty easy to talk about sin (in fact, unless we’re talking about our own sins, it’s a popular topic). It’s less easy for us to discuss virtue, not because most of us don’t think about ourselves as virtuous—or at least, good and decent—but because virtue is, well, just not very interesting. Our public media today, with its 24 hour “news” channels and constant coverage of what passes for politics, would wither, dry up and maybe even blow off like a Texas tumbleweed were it not for our fascination with the sins of our leaders. Imagine a “news” channel that actually covered only the ins and outs of current legislation and policy discussion and left untold the peccadilloes of politicians. They’d be off the air before you could say “John Edwards.” President Obama was smart to promote those recent televised debates on Health Care. Nobody watched. Who cares about that? We want to hear the salacious secrets of the capital.

Virtue has become, for us today, little more than a meaningless propaganda word. We defend somebody, saying he is “virtuous” or attack them, claiming they “lack the necessary virtues.” But for Christians, virtue isn’t an empty word; we used to understand it as one full of fire, a strong word that had to be reckoned with.

“Virtue” comes from the root Latin word vir which means “man.” Virtus means manliness, strength, and power. Things have changed. Nowadays, the word is most commonly used to describe—not a man, but a girl—“she’s virtuous.” By that we mean something like “asexual.” The meaning of the word has almost completely flipped—so now what we really mean is “anemic—but in a good sense.”

Most of us have heard—even if we can’t recite them all—of the Seven Deadly Sins. But that useful medieval list has a mirror in the Seven Heavenly Virtues. Compared to the Deadly Sins, “Heavenly Virtues” sounds anemic too, doesn’t it? It sounds like a cartoon. That’s not the reality, but that’s how far we’ve fallen from understanding virtue.

The Deadly Sins are Pride, Envy, Anger, Greed, Lust, Gluttony and Sloth; the corresponding—pardon me if I say—“Combative” Virtues to these are Humility, Love, Kindness, Generosity, Chastity, Temperance and Zeal. If you think this looks like a bunch of tough kids pitted against the members of a children’s catechism class, I can’t blame you.

That’s because we almost never seen these virtues at work—and when we do, we often don’t even know what we’re looking at. I wish I had time to address them all—I don’t—in fact, the virtue I really want to discuss with you will have to wait until tomorrow. Today we need to look at Pride and Humility.

When we think about “pride” today, it means patriotic fervor, a sense about knowing who we are (like “Black History Month”), or the justifiable sense of accomplishment we have over a job well-done. Those are legitimate things, but none of them carries the meaning of the spiritual combat in which we need to be engaged if we’re not going to end up in hell. Pride in the classical sense means Self-Centeredness. It’s self-absorption, the basic conviction that everything—and everybody—exists for my benefit. It has nothing (well, little) to do with the National Anthem or the table I just built. It has to do with ME, the legitimate center of the Universe. It is utterly and completely unattractive when we see it in others—but that’s only because they don’t understand that I’M the proper center of the Universe. Pride isn’t admirable but grubby and grimy. We may imagine Milton’s Satan, defiantly shaking his fist at God as a symbol of pride, but we’re more correct if we think of Dickens’ Uriah Heep—a scheming, sniveling, self-centered weasel.

Humility is also miscast. Uriah Heep, cringing through David Copperfield, repeatedly protesting his humility, is anything but. He’s the prideful, self-centered villain of the story. When we think of humility, we conjure up images of someone who won’t look you in the face, speaks too softly and suffers from an inferiority complex. If you say something good about this “humble” person, they will immediately deny it, or shift uncomfortably. These displays have nothing to do with humility—they are disguises for a much-wounded pride.

Genuine humility (I speak not as a possessor but an observer) isn’t easily recognized, but it is, like all true virtue, immensely and immediately attractive. We may not know what we’re looking at, but we know it’s Good. Fr Rogers, my old confessor, used to point out that humility derives from the word humus, “soil.” “A humble soul,” he said, “is a person with their feet on the ground. They know Who God Is and that allows them to know who they are.” True humility doesn’t come from thinking “I’m not good enough”—the real power of humility—its strength and virtus, comes from focusing on God, not me. It allows us to see ourselves, not in relation to each other (“at least I’m better than she is”), but in relation to God. I’m a sinner, falling short of God’s goodness and glory. I am dust who shall return to dust, but God has breathed into my soul. I’m a sinner, not because I’m a human being, but because I commit sins. I’m made for something much more.

Holiness isn’t another word for milquetoast. A holy soul isn’t weak and wan, depleted and worn down by spiritual effort. A saint is someone through whom God shines; in the saint God reveals Himself amidst a world of frenzied self-centeredness.

The deeply-flowing wisdom God gives us through His Church, often lost among the scandals and fripperies, exists to make saints. That’s why God became one of us. “He became like us,” St Athanasius the Great said seventeen hundred years ago, “so we could become like Him.” We are meant to become like Jesus, lights of the world, shining in the place it pleases Him to set us. Lent is our pre-eminent school of holiness. Don’t let it be about sugar in your coffee. Virtue is fire; it burns the unworthy.


Tomorrow, everybody’s least favorite topic: SEX!