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The Virtue of Temperance (Temperantia) - VirTrue Episode 44

VirTrue - Helping Man Grow in Truth and Virtue

Some people think lasting happiness means saying “yes” to every desire. Others think it means saying “no” to every desire. Both are wrong. One person spends his life chasing comfort, pleasure, entertainment, and satisfaction until his passions become his master. Another spends his life trying to crush every natural desire through sheer force of will until he becomes the master of his passions. Neither is free. God did not create your body to rule your soul. But neither did He create your soul to wage war against your body. He created both to live in harmony under His loving design. Temperance is not the destruction of desire. It is the redemption of desire. It teaches us not merely to resist temptation, but to love rightly. Not merely to deny ourselves, but to receive God’s gifts with gratitude. Not merely to discipline the body, but to become the kind of person whose desires themselves have been transformed by grace. And that’s why Temperance matters. 🎙️ Intro Welcome back to VirTrue, where we are learning how to become saints by cultivating virtue and overcoming vice. Today we conclude our season on the cardinal virtue of Temperance. Over the past several episodes, we’ve explored the many ways God teaches us to govern our desires—not by destroying them, but by ordering them toward what is truly good. We’ve learned to hold the world lightly without despising God’s creation. We’ve learned to fast without becoming proud. To enjoy God’s gifts without becoming enslaved to them. To speak with wisdom. To suffer willingly. To discern rightly. To mortify the flesh without hating the body. Today we step back to see the whole picture. Because Temperance is much bigger than food, drink, or self-control. It is the beautiful harmony of a soul whose passions have learned to love what God loves. The Social Catholic is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new posts and support our work, become a paid subscriber today! 🌾 What is Temperance? Temperance is the cardinal virtue that moderates our attraction to sensible pleasures according to right reason enlightened by grace. St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that temperance restrains those desires which most powerfully entice us away from reason—especially the pleasures connected to food, drink, sexuality, comfort, and the preservation of life. Yet he is equally clear that these pleasures are not evil. They are good because they were created by God. Sin does not consist in enjoying them but in enjoying them contrary to the order God established. The Catechism describes temperance as “the moral virtue that moderates the attraction of pleasures and provides balance in the use of created goods.” Notice that it does not say it removes pleasure. It orders pleasure. That is because Christianity rejects two opposite errors. The first says: Pleasure is the highest good. The second says: Pleasure itself is evil. Temperance rejects them both. The Christian neither worships creation nor despises it. He receives it. As Sacred Scripture tells us after every act of creation: “God saw that it was good.” (Genesis 1) The problem has never been creation. The problem has always been our relationship to creation. Temperance restores that relationship. It teaches us to hunger rightly. To feast rightly. To rest rightly. To speak rightly. To suffer rightly. To rejoice rightly. Ultimately, temperance is not about saying “no.” It is about becoming free enough to say “yes” to every good gift exactly as God intended. Throughout this season we have seen how that freedom is cultivated. Contempt of the World taught us to hold earthly things lightly so that our hearts remain fixed on heaven. Fasting taught us that bodily appetites are wonderful servants but terrible masters. Silence taught us to discipline not only our stomachs but also our tongues, making room to hear the voice of God. Accommodation reminded us that love tempers our own preferences for the good of another. Sobriety taught us to receive created pleasures gratefully without surrendering our freedom to them. Mortification of the Flesh taught us to embrace voluntary sacrifice, not because the body is evil, but because love is worth suffering for. Discernment taught us to judge every desire wisely, neither acting impulsively nor analyzing endlessly, but choosing what leads us closer to Christ. Together these virtues form one beautiful whole. Temperance is not merely restraint. It is rightly ordered love. 🍖 Vice of Deficiency: Concupiscence Concupiscence is the disordered inclination to allow sensible desires to rule reason. After the Fall, our passions no longer naturally obey reason. We crave comfort. Pleasure. Recognition. Food. Ease. Security. None of these things are evil. They were all created by God. But when they become our masters, freedom disappears. Concupiscence does not merely seek pleasure. It enthrones pleasure. Every deficiency we studied this season ultimately flows from this one disorder. Gluttony. Drunkenness. Garrulity. Softness. Confusion. Each begins when the passions cease serving reason and begin ruling it. The temperate person is not someone without desires. He is someone whose desires have learned to obey reason, and whose reason has learned to obey Christ. 🪨 Vice of Excess: Autarchy Autarchy is the vice of claiming absolute lordship over oneself, attempting to govern one’s passions according to one’s own will rather than receiving and ordering them according to God’s design. If concupiscence says, “My passions will rule me.” Autarchy says, “I alone will rule my passions.” At first, this sounds like virtue. It looks disciplined. Serious. Holy. But beneath the surface lies the oldest temptation in history. “You will be like God.” The person consumed by Autarchy does not trust God’s ordering of human nature. He believes he can improve upon it. He writes his own rule. Defines his own holiness. Measures himself by standards of his own making. Instead of allowing grace to transform desire, he attempts to dominate desire by sheer force of will. He does not surrender his passions to God. He seizes lordship over them himself. This is why the excesses throughout our season shared a common thread. Scorn. Willfulness. Philautia. Affectation. Pharisaism. Misosomatia. Sophistry. Each claims an authority that belongs to God alone. Temperance rejects both slavery to desire and tyranny over the sensitive appetite. Reason does not crush the passions. It perfects them. 👨 My Life I mentioned when I lost my son and my job in the same year that I have a tendency to white-knuckle things and try to bring about “God’s plan” through my own efforts. My Celtic passions and my ADHD tend to drive me toward extremes. I’m either giving in to my sensitive appetites, or I am crushing them through my force of will. Prayerfully resting in the Lord’s will can be challenging for me. When it comes to resting in the Lord’s will, I think of myself like a bad golfer putting too hard and knocking the ball all the way to the other side of the green, or tapping it too softly multiple times in a row. It can be hard for me to feel just the right amount of effort. The further I am from contemplative prayer, the worse this dichotomy gets in me, and the closer I am to the Lord in contemplative prayer, the easier it is to find the right balance. When I feel myself leaning into the extremes in regard to temperance, I know I need to focus on hearing the Lord’s voice, not mine, in prayer. 🌎 The World Modern society usually assumes there are only two ways to live. Indulge yourself. Or suppress yourself. One side tells us to follow every desire because denying ourselves is unhealthy. The other tells us to master ourselves through discipline, optimization, and relentless self-control. Both begin with the same assumption. That you belong to yourself. The Gospel offers something radically different. Your body belongs to God. Your soul belongs to God. Your passions belong to God. The body and our passions are not accidents of the universe. They are not enemies. They are gifts. Our task is neither to be controlled by them nor to destroy them. Our task is to receive them, order them, and offer them back to the One who created them. The world seeks freedom by removing rules and limits. False religion seeks freedom by removing passions and desires. Christianity finds freedom through loving obedience to the will of God and his perfect design 👴 Example Saint: St. Benedict of Nursia Who he was St. Benedict was born around A.D. 480 in Nursia, Italy. Leaving behind the corruption of Rome, he sought God in solitude before gathering disciples around him at Monte Cassino. There he wrote The Rule of St. Benedict, a spiritual masterpiece that has guided monks, religious, clergy, and lay faithful for more than fifteen hundred years. Through its balance of prayer, work, humility, obedience, moderation, and charity, the Rule became one of the most influential documents in Christian history and helped preserve both the Faith and Western civilization after the fall of the Roman Empire. Why he fits At first glance, St. Benedict might seem to represent the very excess we have warned against. His monks fasted, kept silence, rose during the night to pray, embraced poverty, and lived under a detailed rule of life. But nothing could be further from Autarchy. Autarchy says: “I will determine my own path to holiness.” Benedict says: “Receive a rule.” The monk does not invent his own asceticism. He submits himself to one. Not because discipline saves him. Not because suffering earns holiness. But because obedience opens the heart to grace. One of the most beautiful and overlooked lines in the Rule comes in its Prologue where St. Benedict says he hopes to establish “nothing harsh or burdensome.” That surprises many people. The Rule is disciplined. But it is not despotic. Benedict understood that the passions are not the enemy. They are part of God’s good creation. Food. Sleep. Work. Rest. Friendship. All have their proper place. The monk does not conquer himself through domination. He learns to surrender himself through obedience. That is the opposite of Autarchy. Autarchy says, “I will master myself.” Temperance says, “Christ will master me, and in Him my passions will become free.” Discover the Social Catholic Rule of Life. The Social Catholic is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new posts and support our work, become a paid subscriber today! ⚔️ Act of Temperance O my God, I will receive every good gift according to Your holy will. I will neither become a slave to my desires nor seek to dominate them by my own strength. I will remember that my passions are not my enemies but gifts to be ordered toward love. I will reject both concupiscence and autarchy. I will surrender my whole heart, mind, body, and soul to Your loving rule, trusting that Your grace perfects my nature rather than destroys it. Amen. 🙏 Closing Prayer Lord, bless us with faith, hope, love, prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice that we may live as you intended man to live, in all virtue and righteousness. Help us to flee from sin, and avoid all temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Protect us with a spiritual hedge in front of us, behind us, above us, below us, to our right, and to our left, within us, and all around us, and seal it with the blood of your precious Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Help us to keep you in everything that we think, say, and do. Amen. Go out and fill the world with virtue. Deus Vult! Get full access to The Social Catholic at socialcatholic.substack.com/subscribe