The Virtue of Temperance

"Go not after thy lusts, but turn away from thy own will." ~ Sirach 18:30

Related to the Rule of Life we talked about yesterday, and continuing in our Four Cardinal Virtues series, let’s talk about Temperance.

Since this particular virtue relates specifically to our human nature, which, true, is spiritual, but also material, there’s no end to how many sides of it there are. We are just a bundle of needs and wants. Sometimes we astonish ourselves with our weakness in temptation! And yet, we housewives are in the position of teaching our little ones how to have self control…

The physical part of our nature is just that way: we have what the philosophers call “appetites”: keeping our bodies alive, reproducing, and dealing with all the other material creatures out there with their appetites.

These desires and strong urges are not bad in themselves. We’d simply die if we didn’t have them! But since we lack the purely instinctual ability of animals to use them properly, but due to that pesky Fall of Adam, must be rational about them in light of our spiritual nature and destiny for greater things, we must give thought to putting and then keeping them in order. And we must ask God for help.

Intemperance is just living like an animal (without the excuse of it being our nature), or worse. St. Thomas says it’s undignified, dishonorable!

We’ll talk about it more tomorrow! For today, just start thinking about it, because pursuing this virtue is absolutely not what the world thinks it is; yet without it, we will not be able to see our way to the others.

Temperance, from The Seven Virtues, print, anonymous, Netherlandish, 17th century, after Hendrick Goltzius, after Jacob Matham

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