Virtue is more than value: Homily for Friday, February 23, 2024

Readings for Today. Listen to our other podcasts.

We often use the words virtue and value interchangeably. But there is a significant difference.

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Virtue is more than value

Today’s readings bring to mind a very important word for us to kind of know the meaning of and understand. The word is virtue. It’s a philosophical word, actually, that comes to us primarily through the philosopher Aristotle.

For Aristotle, virtue was that righteous action that was in between two extremes. So for example, courage is a virtue, being foolhardy or being reckless or being paralyzed by our fear is not. Virtue stands in the middle, is Aristotle’s great commandment. It’s between those two extremes that are not virtuous.

I mention it because sometimes we use the word virtue interchangeably with value. So in other words, we talk about people having virtues and people having values. But there’s a not so insignificant difference between the use of the word value and the word virtue.

Value is something that has worth. I value that airline pilots know how to fly the plane safely. That’s a value for me. And we pass laws to make sure that airline pilots do the things that they’re supposed to do so that we can be safe. I value when people tell the truth. Honesty can be a value.

Virtue, however, is connected to action. So it’s not just that I can look at something and say, “Well, I value that thing,” without it having any impact in my life, but rather that I understand the virtue is that action that repeated action that becomes habitual. And that too comes from Aristotle. Aristotle says we are what we repeatedly do. So honesty is a virtue. How do we acquire the virtue of honesty? By being repeatedly honest.

And that’s kind of what Jesus is getting at in today’s gospel. You see, virtue is deeper than a single action or a single instance. It’s something that we do so often it becomes something that defines us. It’s the way in which we are. If we are repeatedly faithful to God, then we become faithful. It’s an identity for us.

If it is a virtue for us to live in a particular way and we repeatedly do it, then we become that thing that we desire. And that’s what’s behind what Ezekiel is saying in the first reading. Ezekiel is at a time, as with every prophet, where he’s trying to convince a people that is completely gone astray to come back to the Lord.

And what he’s saying is, if you knew the way of God and abandoned it, that’s a pretty significant and serious thing indeed. If we know what God wants us to do and we completely turn away from that and do something else, that’s a pretty significant thing. So significant, in fact, that Ezekiel says that kind of person is liable to be condemned.

On the other hand, if we recognize in our life that we have turned away from God, we have turned our back on God, but at some point have this moment of conversion because of God’s grace, then indeed God will not reject us because we desire what God desires. Virtue is something that becomes significant for us because it is placed in our heart by God.

The desire to do the right thing, the desire to love, the desire to care for others, the desire to be courageous in the face of harm, all of these are things that God places deep within our heart. And so today, as we continue this season of Lent, let us ask the Lord to help us to continue to do those things we’ve chosen, to make it clearer to us how we can grow in virtue and love the Lord God and our neighbor more fully.

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