+JMJ+
Thank you for reading another issue of The Peasant Times-Dispatch, where we explore the life of faith from the perspective of a peasant—we aren’t experts, we aren’t theologians, we are just trying to do our best (and trying to mean it). Last month, we reflected on Forgiveness at the end of the Jubilee Year. This month, I’m introducing a new series of essays which I am calling “Season Four”.
Notes From The Editor
You may or may not have noticed an uptick in activity in the “Selected Essays” section of paid content for the Times-Dispatch. I have undertaken to analyze and migrate a, well, selection of essays from another space and lightly edit them for wider consumption. These are paywalled because it’s not for a universal audience, these essays are maybe a little strong and a little more unapologetic. I aim to compile them into an ebook and hopefully soon thereafter a physical book, so while I work and make a lot of noise and spin up a bunch of dust—I’m keeping it paywalled. If you’re a paid subscriber and you’d like to see what’s going on, check out the Index of Essays HERE. If you’re not a paid subscriber, consider upgrading by clicking this button!
Otherwise, if you like what you read here, consider supporting The Peasant Times-Dispatch by sharing this post with a friend or leaving a comment telling me what you thought!
Season Four
You might be confused at “Season Four” since the Peasant Times-Dispatch does not have an obvious season structure. That’s because my editorial policy is to do “whatever I want”, and that means slipping seamlessly in and out of seasons as I see fit. Season Three1, you may recall, was the beginning of the quote-centered essay series, which went for a good long while and then ended when I wanted to write other things. I have an idea for a concise eight essay sequence for Season Four, which will take eight months, and then we will return to PTD “Ordinary Time” until I think of something that will become Season Five. I am bad at housekeeping, let’s move on to the topic at hand.
What You’re About To Read
Faith, Hope, and Charity are theological virtues. That means, under our own power, we cannot produce in ourselves these virtues—they are gifts from God wherever they are found. As peasants—or rather, as humans—we want these gifts. So, what can be done to move towards them? We have seven capital virtues which are contrary to the seven deadly sins, and we can do some work to grow the former and shun the latter, and in so doing make ourselves receptive to the workings of the Holy Spirit. From thence comes Faith, Hope, and Charity.
In this series, I will meditate on each of the capital virtues, in this order: Patience, Humility, Diligence, Kindness, Temperance, Chastity, Generosity2. In each essay, we will discuss the value of each virtue to the Peasantly idiom and we will contemplate how each relates to the three theological virtues.
These are more reflections than instructions. I’m not telling you how to grow in virtue with this one weird trick. I’m telling you, effectively, how each of these virtues is valuable and I’m looking at them through this peasant lens to see how the world looks different. Think of it less as “Here is how to do this” and more like you invited me to coffee and asked “Hey what can you tell me about patience?”3
That is to say: This is ‘advice from a friend’ not expert wisdom. I’ll share things I’ve learned from my own experience, things I am figuring out in the trenches right there with you, and things I am trying out in the hope of success. Check these essays against your own experience, and see what you think. Let this be a dialogue. In fact, I encourage it: I’ll include a DM button with each essay, and I will publish a special Q&A issue to answer the anonymized questions.
To give you a taste, and because these three virtues are going to be touched upon in every subsequent essay, let’s spend some time talking about the Theological Virtues, Faith, Hope, and Charity.
I Do Believe; Help Mine Unbelief
Of a truth I firmly believe, O Good Jesus, and with lively faith confess, that Thou Thyself, equal to God the Father in glory and in power, true God and Man, art verily and indeed present in this sacrament [the Eucharist]. For Thou, the very Truth itself, hast said, this is my body, this is my blood. I believe whatever the Son of God hath said. Nothing can be truer than this word of Him who is the Truth. I do believe, Lord; help mine unbelief, increase my faith.
“Increase my Faith”—this seems like such a strange request. If we think about it it’s strange that it’s a theological virtue, that anyone who has faith only has it because God has given it to them. But I think it sets an important tone for this series and for how we understand God: nothing we have is ours. I’m not going halfsies with God on a house, the house is God’s from the start, and if I buy one then it’s with God’s help. If I am moved by a homily, if I feel called to prayer, if I feel love for our Blessed Mother—it’s the Holy Spirit stirring our inmost heart. Not us!
This means the first and most fundamental component of our act of faith is gratitude. Because God called us to prayer, because God has blessed us with an intellect to understand what faith even is, because Jesus died for us.
It’s strange to talk about faith and then immediately pivot to gratitude, but the two are intimately connected. To whom much is given, much is expected. Seek and ye shall find. We want to love God. Faith is accepting God at his word, and understanding that only He can give it to us. But for Him to increase, we must decrease.
Faith has a couple elements we can connect to it. Someone who is loyal we could also say is faithful. Can we keep our faith through good times and bad times both? That is faith. In the same sense we can talk about fidelity, or abiding by the law or the covenant. Are we going to Mass on Sunday, but not living like a Catholic the rest of the week? Do we pay lip service to the Homily and ignore God’s stirrings in our hearts? We want to be faithful—to have fidelity—to our beloved God. There’s also this component of belief—do we actually hold as true everything God tells us is true, everything the Church teaches4?
Loyalty, Fidelity, and Belief—these are qualities we like to have in people, in friends, in colleagues. Can we offer these qualities to God?
It is good, then, to ask God to increase our faith. No one can claim to be faithful enough—there is always room for Him to increase.
To Whom Shall I Go?
O Christ Jesus, I am sinful dust and ashes, but Thou callest to Thee all who labor and are burdened, that Thou mayest refresh them. Art not Thou my refuge? To whom else shall I go? Thou has the words of eternal life, Thou alone canst comfort me in every trouble. Lord, I am weak and sick, but Thou art my salvation. Those who are well need not a physician, but those who are sick. Therefore I come to Thee, my physician and my refuge, hoping that this communion [in Mass] may be to me the increase of Faith, Hope, and Charity; a firm defense against the snares of my enemies; a help to the removal of the fault and defect of (here name a particular fault), and to the bringing forth of works well pleasing unto Thee, especially (here name a particular work), and a pledge of future glory. This is the hope and desire which I cherish in my heart, for Thou art compassionate and of tender mercy, and in all Thy promises most faithful.
Hope is also a theological virtue, which comes from God. Seems strange too, right? Hope is about as natural as ‘want’. I want x, I hope I get x. Hope in it’s capacity as a theological virtue transcends natural wants and rises to supernatural wants. Hope is a theological virtue because it is the desire for supernatural goods. Hope for Heaven, hope for an increase in Virtue. Hope is oriented towards not just any end, but a final end. Hope illuminates seasons of darkness, and nourishes seasons of light. Hope reminds us that God loves us, that God promises heaven for us, that God has not abandoned us. When we feel this kind of hope, God is giving us this virtue!
The vice contrary to hope is despair, which is the erroneous belief that God has abandoned us. You may have heard that Peter and Judas both betrayed Jesus, but Judas despaired while Peter hoped. It is so easy to despair in this day and age. And there are lots of reasons we dispose ourselves to despair. I, myself, have suffered seasons of spiritual desolation where I felt God had abandoned me and I was unworthy of God’s graces. I have also suffered the despair of hoping for the world to be fixed and everything to be perfect, and the discouragement that follows from the worlds fallen nature. Hope is a theological virtue because Hope infuses us with a supernatural disposition. We can tolerate suffering because we know it has value and meaning when we unite it to Christ; we can tolerate worldly evils because we know God is unshakeable. We know5 that perseverance in virtue, while difficult, is rewarded with heaven. This has to be a supernatural virtue because it defies our nature, which is to see difficulties as bad and suffering as avoidable. We can embrace the trials and tribulations of the world as sanctifying; we can endure suffering as a little martyrdom.
If we struggle for hope, we can start simple. We can trust in God’s promises. God Himself, while on earth, promised us this: Seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you. We can ask God to increase our Hope, and so help sustain us through this vale of tears.
United In The Bond Of Love
O most sweet Savior, Jesus Christ, how great was Thy love, which drew Thee from the bosom of the Father to this vale of tears, to take our flesh and endure infinite miseries and wrongs, yea, even the death of the Cross, and that only for us miserable sinners and for our salvation. O how great was Thy love! Thou mightest have condemned us, and Thou didst rather choose to save us: we were guilty, and Thou, the sinless One, didst endure our punishment to set us free. Out of love it was that Thou camest down to take our flesh; and when about to depart from this world to the Father, Thou didst leave to us this Sacrament [the Eucharist] as a pledge of Thy love, that after a new and wondrous manner Thou mightest abide with us for ever; Thou whose delights are to be with the children of men. O Lord, how worthy art Thou of love, who dost so much for love of us! Wherefore I will love Thee, O Lord, m Strength, my Refuge, and my Deliverer. O God, Thou art true Love! He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in Thee. I desire to receive Thee in this Sacrament [the Eucharist], that I may be more firmly united with Thee in the bond of love. Who shall separate me from the love of Christ my Savior? O that neither life, nor death, nor any creature may have power to do so.
Charity comes from the Latin caritas, and is often translated “Love”. For the Theological virtue, when I say charity, I mean Love, and will use them interchangeably. Love feels natural to us, too—yet, it comes from God? How can this be? Everyone, sinners and saints alike, understands what love is. How can Love be a theological virtue?
It might be a cliché to point to the different Greek forms of love, but that doesn’t quite answer the question of how Love can be Theological. We only receive this virtue as a gift from God, we can not muster this virtue in ourselves. I think it is most evident when we talk about sacrifice.
Sacrifice has the modern connotation of giving something up, but in a religious context it is an offering for or to someone. Ancient animal sacrifices were offerings to God of that which was already God’s, giving God, in a sense, the first and greatest portion. Far from being a bureaucratic stamp, these ancient animal sacrifices were acts of devoted worship—they were acts of Love for our creator. Christ came to this earth to offer Himself as a sacrifice for us—an act of Love for the created. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son! This is part of what makes Love theological—it is sacrificial love.
Love need not only be expressed as a cross, though. We can sacrifice many different things in many different ways as acts of love for many different people—but the true object and reason to sacrifice at all is love of God. A husband may sacrifice for love of his spouse, and his love for his spouse may be intricately tied up in his love for God for giving him his spouse in the first place. Devotion to his wife just is devotion to God, making sacrifices for his wife can be sacrifices done for love of God at the same time.
This sounds complicated, but let me make it simple: God is infinite. Loving God is not mutually exclusive—that is to say, our love is not limited to one thing and if it’s not God it’s wrong. Because Love is a theological virtue it comes from God and goes back to God. Love of God is the beginning of virtue because it permits us to recognize that God is the beginning and end of our earthly life, and all other loves are changed when infused with a divine love. When we begin to love with the love of God, we begin to see the world differently, to sacrifice ourselves differently, to reach out into the world differently. And through us, a stranger may experience the love of Christ which comes from God and passes through us to that person.
We cannot give what we do not have, and so it is good to pray first and foremost for God to grant us a heart to love with this divine love.
Looking Forward
This post has been meditations on the theological virtues, and not very much practical tips and tricks. The practical will follow: The next post in this series will cover Patience, and how Patience can help us receive Faith, Hope, and Charity. All the virtues are mutually reinforcing, but I recognize there might be dimensions to the theological virtues that haven’t been touched upon yet. If there’s anything missing, send me a DM—I will answer your questions in a future post.
If you liked this essay, make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss the rest of the series! Or if you think someone you know needs to read some of what I’ve said, share it with your friends! Otherwise, thank you so much for reading. I look forward to bringing you more essays in this new format for Season Four.
AJPM
I am unclear on the first two seasons so whatever my reasoning for starting the counting at “three”, this comes after that and so is “four”.
My list actually says “Charity” but it’s the virtue contrary to Avarice and Greed. To avoid confusion, the Theological Virtue will be Charity and the Capital Virtue will be Generosity.
It’s worth noting that the essays will be published in an order because one must necessarily follow the other. There’s a reason for the order, but it’s not a requirement. You can wait for the virtue you care about to come around and read that and ignore everything else. You can read each essay as it comes. It’s all good, man!
When I converted I had to recite the following: “I believe and profess all that the Holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God.” I was so nervous about bungling it that I kept the slip of paper with the words, and it’s been a healthy reminder in the intervening years. It can be, at times, confronting to attempt to recite this prayer without qualification.
Persecutors: “Do you really think that, after this, heaven will be your reward?” St Justin Martyr: “I don’t think—I know!”
I know you acknowledged that there aren't any "practical tips" for this essay, but you've given quite a bit of points to reflect on. So thank you. :)
Is the entire section in italics a source reference? I'm just curious to know where it came from!