I love St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, our 2nd reading today. Paul encourages us to “not conform (ourselves) to this age but (to) be transformed by the renewal of (our) minds, that (we) may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.” In our faith we never settle for 2nd best but always strive for perfection, for holiness.
The striving for perfection is not only a Judeo-Christian principle, but a universal truth, part of the eternal and natural law. We are given this instinct to want to be good, to desire perfection and what is pleasing.
The Philosopher Aristotle in his work “Nicomethian Ethics” speaks on virtue and vice and what makes a man happy, and it is not fleeting happiness, but an inner happiness and peace which rests in the life of acquiring virtue.
People have been asking the question, “what is good,” since the beginning of time. The biblical answers to that question are simple and straightforward, “God is good,” “(goodness is) an in dwelling of the spirit,” “(good or goodness) is righteousness and truth,” and there are many other verses that refer to what is good or goodness, but they all have a central theme, they all deal with the virtues and God’s grace, obviously. These virtues are courage, temperance, fortitude, and prudence as well as faith, hope and love all of which are found in Scripture.
We must desire these virtues and do everything in our power to obtain them. As I said previously, acquiring the virtues is not something only Judeo-Christians are called to do, but it is a universal call from God, something innate in our nature. Getting back to our friend Aristotle, he understood this, and though not a Christian or a Jew, in his observations he discovered four kinds of men (people).
I. The Virtuous Man
II. The Continent Man
III. The Incontinent Man
IV. The Tyrant
The virtuous man is the perfect man in and that he has acquired all the virtues and lives them well. He has handed himself over to goodness and has become its (goodness) servant. The continent man is a good man who has acquired many virtues and for the most part lives them well with the exceptional fall into vice or sin. The incontinent man is a person who struggles between virtue and vice, he is sometimes good and sometimes evil – in varying degrees. This person needs more practice to build up good habits, for as you know bad habits usually die hard. The person finds themselves in a tug of war between good and evil. The tyrant is an evil man, a person who has given into the passions and all sorts of vice, he has became a slave to his own evil and that evil dictates all of his choices. He has become a prisoner and there is no happiness in him.
I think most people fall between two and three, while only Jesus and Mary were “virtuous,” their entire lives and the saints who at some point also became virtuous as their immediate entrance into heaven proves.
Aristotle was speaking a universal truth when it came to observing humanity and that a human being, the person in order to be happy and free must strive to become virtuous.
St. Paul in his letter to the Romans cannot stress this enough. “…Sin must not reign over your mortal bodies so that you obey their desires. And do not present the parts of your bodies to sin as weapons for wickedness, but present yourselves to God as raised from the dead to life and the parts of your bodies to God as weapons for righteousness. For sin is not to have any power over you, since you are not under the law but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? Of course not! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, although you were once slaves of sin, you have become obedient from the heart to the pattern of teaching to which you were entrusted. Freed from sin, you have become slaves of righteousness.” Rom.6:12-18.
Is St. Paul saying anything much different than Aristotle? In the sense that goodness and truth is a person and that person being Jesus Christ whom we can have a relationship with, yes in that sense they differ, but in the sense of what is good and right they are identical. They are identical because the truth is always the truth, whether it is discovered by an ancient Greek philosopher, a Christian Saint from Tarsus or you and I here at Holy Family. God speaks to all and has given us Himself, so much so that through the Eucharist He is within us and even in our very nature He is within us, as some would say the Divine spark.
The philosophical and theological lesson has been given, but its practical component is yet to come and it comes in the form of questions. To whom are you a slave of, a slave of righteousness (virtue) or a slave of sin (vice)? And of Aristotle’s four men which are you? Which of Aristotle’s men do you wish to be? The Christian response to this last question should be, “I want to be saint . . . I want to be a saint. Amen, Fr. John
Picture and quote above is that of Aristotle
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