When God created the world, he declared it good. All things in creation therefore participate in God’s goodness. Because of this, we cannot oppose created goodness to divine goodness, as if we must choose one or the other. Love for created goods must be animated by our love of God. Virtue, then, is primarily about properly appreciating the goodness with which the world is suffused, not about denying ourselves earthly goods. We are wired for finding goodness, not for avoiding it.

There is, of course, the possibility that created goods could distract us from God. Saint Bonaventure compares this to a bride who loves her wedding ring to the point that she forgets her husband. On the other hand, the bride should not despise the ring. Instead, she should allow it to lead her to love her husband more. Likewise, we cannot love the world more than God, but neither can we love God and ignore all the good he has done. This is why, for example, love of neighbor is part of our love of God.

This is easier said than done. We can make the mistake of thinking of virtue as seeking the good that God wants and denying ourselves the good that we want. The truth is far different. The point of virtue is not to extinguish desire but to fulfill it so that we can most perfectly want what is good. The generous man loves his money rightly and can find joy in it. The miser thinks he loves money more, but he loves it wrongly, and never attains any real good with it. Any joy he finds is fleeting or illusory. Only virtue really attains the good and fulfills our deepest desires.

Part of the trouble with virtue, however, is that it is very difficult to understand if you do not possess it. The miser thinks that the generous man is only helping the poor to remain poor. The petty man disdains the casual self-sacrifice of others. The libertine cannot appreciate chastity, so he assumes that something is wrong with monks. Virtue is incomprehensible to vice. If we lack a certain virtue, it may not even occur to us to think that this virtue is inherently good.

This means that growth in virtue includes both a change in the will and a change in the intellect. Not only must we act differently, we must also come to appreciate what is really good in the world. These mutually reinforce each other. The Christian moral life is not about trying harder, it is about drawing closer to God. Similarly, when we want to exhort others to virtue, we have to help them to truly see the good in the world, and not just berate them into following the rules. The search for virtue that is the Christian life is not about just doing what we are supposed to do. It is about coming to appreciate what is good.

This is why we are edified when we see virtue, and why we read and write stories about virtuous people. This is especially the case in the midst of our present pandemic. Despite the chaos surrounding us, I have been quite edified by the response of many people. Many have dedicated themselves more to prayer because of the lack of sacraments. Other individuals and businesses are finding ways to serve the common good in this situation. Certainly many evils have occurred, but through it all, virtue can show forth the glory of God. That is a good we can delight in. Looking to goods like these can stimulate our moral imagination and lead us in our own growth in virtue.

We can also look for these goods in prayer, in our meditations on the scriptures and the good things God has done in our lives. The Christian life is not about our attempt to make ourselves better, rather it is about becoming more and more receptive to God’s goodness. He is acting in the world at all times to reveal himself through the goodness which he has distributed. It can be found, because it is there.

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Photo by  Jeff Belmonte (CC-BY 2.0)