Do you take seriously the call to choose well and to honor what is good and right in all of your choices? - Daily Reflections June 2, 2017

GOOD HABITS

Some Pentecostals accuse Catholics of being vain and repetitious in their prayers when they critique the rosary. I wonder how they feel about the virtuous life. The only way I know to grow in virtue and create good habits is to repeat good choices and actions over and over again. Neurologists will tell us that repeated actions are necessary in the creation of solid neural pathways that will lead to good habits. If we want to be good moral people, there is no other way apart from the repetition of good choices.

       The Fathers of the Church — Aquinas and many other great theologians and moralists — tell us that the only way to grow in virtue is the repeated application of good choices in our lives. In other words, sheer hard work. Yes, it is only by grace that we are able to do anything good. But this does not mean that we do not need to apply ourselves to the situation at hand. A virtue without the persons who choose to avail themselves of such graces is grace that will never be activated or used. To live healthily, we should exercise often and eat good food. There are very few people who find choosing well consistently along those lines an easy task.

       Growing in virtue operates under the same dynamic of becoming consistent in our choice of the good and right. We have to work at this choice every time it comes as it rarely, if ever, arrives in our lives without a whole set of other choices (we call them temptations) to do otherwise, to the detriment of our goal of the virtuous life. Fr. Steve Tynan, MGL

---------- REFLECTION QUESTION ----------

Do you take seriously the call to choose well and to honor what is good and right in all of your choices?

Jesus, help me to see in Your own choices an example for my own moral life. Help me to choose well and not be seduced by convenience and the easy way out. Amen.