Lent 2018



Character is in the will, not in the intellect.

Look for the best in others.

Look for the worst in yourself.

- Fulton Sheen





Pope Francis





“Closeness is also the key to truth; not just the key to mercy, but the key to truth. Can distances really be shortened where truth is concerned? Yes, they can. Because truth is not only the definition of situations and things from a certain distance, by abstract and logical reasoning. It is more than that. Truth is also fidelity. It makes you name people with their real name, as the Lord names them, before categorizing them or defining ‘their situation.’ There is a distasteful habit, is there not, of following a ‘culture of the adjective’: this is so, this is such and such, this is like… No! This is a child of God. Then come the virtues or defects, but [first] the faithful truth of the person and not the adjective regarded as the substance.

“We must be careful not to fall into the temptation of making idols of certain abstract truths. They can be comfortable idols, always within easy reach; they offer a certain prestige and power and are difficult to discern. Because the ‘truth-idol’ imitates, it dresses itself up in the words of the Gospel, but it does not let those words touch the heart. Much worse, it distances ordinary people from the healing closeness of the word and of the sacraments of Jesus.”



Personal Notes from
Four Cardinal Virtues
by Joseph Pieper





Prudence is the mold and mother of all the virtues. The degree to which you are prudent determines in a sense the degree to which you are Brave, Just, Temperate. That is to say, the degree to which you can see (prudence is an intellectual virtue, so see is an analogy for practical insight so to speak) is the degree to which you know how to navigate a particular situation or reality in terms of the application of virtue.


Many people invert the meaning of prudence to mean protection of self, calculation in order to bolster oneself....rather than the traditional definition. This leads to calling vice prudent and virtue imprudent. But this is a definitional issue, which showcases a fundamental change in attitude regarding the self in relationship to reality, the world etc.


Being Precedes truth. And Truth precedes goodness.


Being an intellectual virtue, concerned with particulars, Prudence sees being and supplies the necessary truth to actions, so that, being chosen by the will, a person can choose the Good, which is accordance with the truth and with being.


Prudence is a necessary gatekeeper, although it is actually a habit of mind, between Reality and a good action. There fore it is necessary.


Prudence is the precondition for any virtue. It is the precondition for, and is synonymous with good action. Prudence requires receptivity to reality (i.e. Reason) and Reality itself (i.e. reality which reveals itself to me.


You can have no good action without prudence.



John Donne

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.



Writings of Jose Maria Escriva



Way, Furrow, Forge





Furrow 190: Vocations to the apostolate are sent by God. But you must not cease to make use of the means: prayer, mortification, study or work, friendship, supernatural outlook...interior life!



Furrow 381: When will you be convinced that you have to obey? And you disobey if, instead of fulfilling your plan of life, you waste your time. You have to fill every minute with work, study, proselytism, interior life.