Journeys of a Catholic Poster Girl

Comment by dsyeago

July 18, 2007 @ 11:46 am

Here’s a stab at “moderation in all things.”

The goal of human life, dramatized and focused for the rest of us in the life of the monk, is quaerere Deum — seeking God.

Seeking God is not, however, something that we can do as a single act or movement. As embodied creatures, we can only seek God through our relation to created things. This includes both merely natural created things and those created things that God employs by special appointment to impart his grace.

Seeking God involves the way we deal with our own bodily needs and all the other things that go with being human — family, language, work, community — and also with the means God has given us to be brought supernaturally into communion with himself.

These aren’t simply two parallel levels; they interact with one another and properly form over time a pattern called holiness. Jesus is fairly clear that our sacrificing at the altar (= the supernatural means) can’t be isolated from our relations to our brothers (Matthew 5:21-26).

Moderation means, I think, giving to the various elements of our lives the commitment and the effort that is due to each in view of our over-arching goal of seeking God. “Overdoing it” means that some element is getting disproportionate attention — disproportionate, that is, to its real and proper place in a life devoted to seeking God.

Moderation is most basically a virtue — the disposition to relate all our activities and enjoyments appropriately to the end of seeking God. The operations of virtues is notoriously hard to reduce to rules.

So how many hours a day should you read? It might be a good idea, for some people, to fix a limit, so that they generally don’t end up reading too much or too little. But there is no general rule that, for example, two hours is OK but two-and-a-half is overdoing it. It depends on what else you have to do in your particular life-circumstances, in what bonds God has providentially entangled you, what tasks you have been given, what beaten-up people turn up lying across your path, etc. It also depends, I suppose, what you’re reading and why, and on how reading affects your interactions with the world and other people, etc. etc.

There is always a gap between moral theory and practice that has to be filled by practical wisdom or prudence. Prudence of course is also a virtue, the disposition to deal with what’s real in your life in the light of your true end.

Now, how you can get virtue if you already need virtue even to seek virtue is an old, old question. Blessedly, there is such a thing, according to St. Thomas, as “infused moral virtue,” virtue that God gives even to those who have not acquired virtue by practice. This is something like what the Psalmist says when he declares that the law of the Lord “makes wise the simple.”

This is no kind of practical advice but maybe it sheds some light on the shape of the problem. The closest anyone who doesn’t know you could get to practical advice is (1) think about the big picture — what you really want to seek in your life — and how various activities fit into that, and (2) pray for the light that enlightens the simple (= the children of Adam).

Comment by bubby

August 1, 2007 @ 1:51 pm

Yeah emmy, still something I need to work on is moderation. Running is the biggest thing I need to improve on, as well as watching sports haha