Virtue

*VIRTUE - see Faith, Hope, Charity, Prudence, Temperance, Justice, Fortitute

Question 3 About the Kingdom of God - What is the greatest virtue in the kingdom? (200Answers, p259)

Who has a more fierce struggle than the person who strives to master himself? And this must be our occupation: to strive to master ourselves and daily to grow stronger and to advance from good to better. A humble understanding of yourself is a surer way to God than a profound searching after knowledge. Many people have chosen to seek knowledge rather than to live well. If they would apply such diligence in rooting out vice and implanting virtues as they do in posing questions, there would not be so many evils and scandals among people. Surely, when the day of judgment comes we shall not be asked what we have read but what we have done, not how well we have spoken but how devoutly we have lived. (Imitation, Book1, Ch3)

Keeping the rules is essential to the good life but, by biblical standards, is never sufficient. Aspects of our amnesic modern culture make it increasingly easy to focus on what has been called "external conformity" to the law of God while forgetting the necessity of receiving and cultivating inner VIRTUE. The good [VIRTUOUS] life is really more being than doing. It is being that issues in doing, but in begins by the purification of the soul and continues in the cultivation, or sanctification, of the soul. (Vanity, p81-82)