Showing posts with label Unit One. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Unit One. Show all posts

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Focus on Particular Virtues


Can you tell which virtues these Scripture verses represent on the tower diagram in the book?

Ephesians 6:10-12
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Proverbs 16:16
How much better to get wisdom than gold,to choose understanding rather than silver!

1 Corinthians 13
Love never fails. ....So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Try the Scatter, then go on to next section

Humility, the Foundation Virtue

If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least nothing whatever can be done before it."...

Now I must turn to Faith in the second or higher sense: and this is the most difficult thing I have tackled yet. I want to approach it by going back to the subject of Humility. You may remember I said that the first step towards humility was to realise that one is proud. I want to add now that the next step is to make some serious attempt to practise the Christian virtues. A week is not enough."

 --C.S. Lewis
The book says that humility is the foundation virtue.  Using the analogy of the tower, it is the opposite of the foundational motive of the builders of Babel, which was arrogance and pride.  Our faith tells us that pride was the cause of the first sins.  Satan and the bad angels did not want to serve.  Eve and Adam wanted to be like God.
Humility was largely meant as a restraint upon the arrogance and infinity of the appetite of man. He was always outstripping his mercies with his own newly invented needs. His very power of enjoyment destroyed half his joys. By asking for pleasure, he lost the chief pleasure; for the chief pleasure is surprise. Hence it became evident that if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small.. GK Chesterton
Faith requires humility because to believe something as true requires that one understand one does not know.   Children have a natural humility which tells them to trust and imitate and believe what their parents and others tell them.  As we get older we have to learn to practice the right kind of humility.   That doesn't mean thinking that we are worthless or stupid or untalented, because that is a kind of lie to ourselves and it is ungrateful to God.   God made us with great value and intelligence and gave us all our own gifts.   The most important aspect of humility is to realize that God gave us everything we have.

 The tower diagram in the book lists Proverbs 22:4 which says


Humility and the fear of the Lord bring wealth and honor and life.
You can easily draw your own comparisons between those promises and the outcome of the Tower of Babel. 

 Go on to next section

Review

Matching Game on Virtues
(you can try BugMatch instead if you want)

More on Habits

Whether you eat or drink, or do anything else, do all for the glory of God.  St Paul, 1 Corinthians 10:31
Good moral habits are called virtues.   The word virtue comes from a Latin word meaning excellence or that which is appropriate to a man ("man" meaning human rather than animal or plant, not meaning "man" vs "woman").

You can see that it might be appropriate to an animal simply to spend its life searching for food, eating,  and eventually having children, but for a human it would not be enough.   Humans have been given the power to choose between better and worse. 

An animal might run to protect itself from danger or alternately, it might stay and fight an attacker to protect its young or its pack.    Either way, natural instinct decides what it chooses.   But humans are diferent because while they might feel the same instincts to protect itself or others, the human has to choose which would be better in this situation, and then try to do it.

Such choices come up all the time in the life of any human, and habit helps us do easily what would be better to do.   It would be difficult to live for even a day if you had to think through every single thing -- how to do it, whether it would be better to do it this way or another way.

Yet it's also important to sometimes think through things and decide whether to replace an old habit with a new one.   This is another thing that animals don't do, but humans have to do to avoid staying immature forever.  Maybe you used to be afraid of going to sleep in the dark, so you always had a nightlight, but one day you decided you were too old for that.  You start switching off the light at night and pretty soon you have a new habit.  

Some habits are more important than others.   If you have a habit of lying or sneak-attacking people, this matters more to your ultimate human life than whether you put on your left or right sock first.    Habits that are objectively bad, contrary to virtue, are more important to deal with than habits that are just useful or useless.   

St Paul, in the quote above, reminds us that all actions should be measured as to whether they are for the glory of God.   Maybe it doesn't seem important how you eat or drink, but offering every action to God can give worth to even the smallest action.

St Therese said :

To pick up a pin for love can convert a soul."

To DO:

If you haven't finished reading OUr Goal and Our Guides pages 48-66. read some more.

Friday, October 1, 2010

Natural and Supernatural Virtues

Thomas Aquinas teaches that there are seven basic virtues.   

The theological virtues are infused by God through Baptism, are strengthened by the Holy Eucharist, and are restored when lost or weakened by the Sacrament of Reconciliation.    They are faith, hope and charity.  All of these are given to us by His grace but it is our job to encourage them and practice them (there is more on this later).

The cardinal virtues help us practice and make use of what God has given us.  

But to reach our destination we must also have prudence to choose the best means of getting there, justice to fulfill our obligations to God and man on the way, fortitude to overcome the difficulties we encounter, and temperance not to be sidetracked on the way by passing pleasures and satisfactions.

To remember:

By faith we know God, by Hope we trust His goodness and promises, and by Charity we love Him.   Light and Life

Go on to Next Section

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Review: Focus on St Augustine of Hippo

[Illustration]

ST. AUGUSTINE WITH HIS MOTHER

I don't really have a review for you yet. Since this book quotes St Augustine several times, I thought maybe you could learn a little about the life and thought of this great Saint.

Read a short account of St Augustine's Life.

When you have read it, try this quiz. I got 76% the first time -- see if you can do better than that. I missed the one about what he was the patron saint of -- you can find that information here.

Try an interesting quiz asking you to complete the quotations from St Augustine's writings. I found that I could do well on it just by using my understanding of what he was saying. Also, because Augustine was a rhetorician and wrote balanced sentences, a lot of times you can find the right phrase to complete the quote just by seeing the comparisons and contrasts in the passage. Anyway, give it a try! (I missed one).

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

General Review of First Unit

Review

Spreading the Faith

pages 95-99

Review of Rule of Faith

Rule of Faith #3

pages 89-94

The Rule of Faith #2

pages 81-88

The Rule of Faith #1

pages 77-end of 80

Faith #9

pages 73 (end) to 76

Faith #8

pages 70-end of 73

Professing Our Faith

It's important to make direct acts of faith regularly. Our Church tries to smooth our way for us, and that might be one reason that we say the Nicene Creed during every Mass. It is good to make Acts of Faith even more often. The children at Fatima said a short Act of Faith that is easy to remember and is also an act of Reparation for sinners:

Fatima Prayer
My God, I believe, I adore, I trust and I love Thee.
I beg pardon for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not trust, and do not love Thee.

Go on to next section

Habitual and Actual Faith

If you haven't already, spend this day reading pages 47-67 of Our Goal and Our Guides.This lesson is on habitual and actual faith.

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church
After you read it, go on to next section:

From where does our justification come?
Our justification comes from the grace of God.

What does justification work in us?
With justification, faith, hope, and charity are poured into our hearts, and obedience to the divine will is granted us.

Can we deserve grace from God?
No; grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.

What is grace?
Grace is a participation in the life of God.

How do we become participants in the life of God?
 By Baptism the Christian participates in the grace of Christ, the Head of his Body. As an "adopted son" he can henceforth call God "Father," in union with the only Son. He receives the life of the Spirit who breathes charity into him and who forms the Church.

What is sanctifying or habitual grace?
Sanctifying grace is an habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition that perfects the soul itself to enable it to live with God, to act by his love.

How does habitual grace differ from actual grace?
Habitual grace, the permanent disposition to live and act in keeping with God's call, is distinguished from actual graces which refer to God's interventions, whether at the beginning of conversion or in the course of the work of sanctification.

Review of Faith

Focus on Particular Virtues

This lesson is based on pages 52-56 in Our Goal and Our Guides

You might remember a picture of a tower in the book.   The idea for the picture is based on Our Lord's teaching in Luke 14:

Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.'
In the same way, working consciously to learn more and apply the knowledge of different virtues can help a Christian build a solid foundation.   Faith, of course, is the main theme of the year and has already been mentioned.    The others are:

  1. Humility
  2. Prudence
  3. Fortitude
  4. Charity

Go on to next section

Faith #5