The Virtue of Prudence: Living Deliberately
So, we’ve talked about the moral virtue of prudence. We’ve seen how this virtue can help us take control of our time and move our lives forward. This is the first step in using this virtue to fulfill your human potential.
How the Virtue of Prudence Helps You Fulfill Your Human Potential
Prudence is a natural virtue, associated with the natural moral law. This is the arm of the moral law that helps you to live according to the plan that God placed within human nature so you can fulfill your human potential. Cool, huh?
Don’t worry. I’m not going to get all academic on you. Though I could. I really love this stuff!
But the point I want to make here is that the virtue of prudence (and all virtue) is part of God’s plan for us as human beings. Busyness and chaos are not. How do I know? Well, let’s think about it.
What does it mean to live our human potential? Saint Thomas Aquinas, following the works of Aristotle, tells us that to be a human being means that we
- Have an intellect so that we can know the truth
- Have free will so that we can choose goodness and ultimately so that we can love
- Have bodily senses and bodily appetites so that we can interact with Creation
We live according to God’s plan for our human potential when we engage all of these “faculties” of human nature. This is our happiness.
Find Your Happiness by Living Deliberately
Practicing prudence and living deliberately lead to happiness, fulfillment, and peace. Isn't that what we all work so hard to achieve? Click To TweetWhat this means for you is that you will find more happiness when you live deliberately. You will be miserable if you allow the world to take control of your life so that all you are doing is reacting to the various demands imposed on you.
So, let’s talk about what it means to live prudently and deliberately in a general way so that you can apply these principles to other areas of your life.
Living deliberately and exercising the virtue of prudence means thinking about your life.
Thinking about your life requires first creating the habit of quiet reflection. A great time for me to do this is over my morning cup(s) of coffee. I am in the habit of lingering over that first cup of coffee and thinking and praying. Choose a time of the day to get into the habit of quiet reflection. It also means learning how to think critically. Critical thinking is about questioning your assumptions, testing your theories and discovering what is really true. Thinking about your life also means asking the question “why.” Why am I doing this? Why am I going about it this way? Why did I think this was the best for me right now?
Living deliberately and exercising prudence means planning your life
Set priorities and goals in various areas of your life. Be proactive with your time and energy and other personal resources. If you find yourself getting overloaded, it probably means that you have fallen into the habit of reacting to demands on your life rather than planning.
Living deliberately and exercising prudence means making choices about achieving your goals.
Fortified with a premeditated plan, you now have the freedom to exercise the human will and choose how you use your time. No, the demands don’t automatically go away. They’re still there. But now you can filter every demand on your personal resources through the frame of your priorities and goals. You can choose which demands you give into and which ones you respectfully decline.
Living deliberately and exercising prudence means having the freedom (margin) to respond thoughtfully and carefully to the unexpected.
Now, as a good Catholic you might be a little uncomfortable by now. Isn’t the life of Christ all about giving up control, not seizing control? Absolutely. But the question is who you give control to. Jesus tells us, “take my yolk on your shoulders and find that my yolk is easy, my burden is light.” When the world seizes control from us, it makes us overloaded and oppressed. In order to be free to give our control to Jesus, we really need first to take control back away from the world. Then we are free to follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit whenever they come. We are free to handle the unexpected curve balls in life. We are also free to follow the unexpected promptings of God. Keep that margin in your life.
The Purpose of a Deliberate Life: Love God
Ultimately, moral virtue is really about living a fully human life. It’s about activating your full potential, living according to God’s plan for you. It is not God’s plan for us to be swept along by the currents of the world, reacting to one demand on your time after another. God’s will is for you to make a free gift of yourself to others – and that means that you first have to be free. Ultimately, God wants you to know Him, love Him, and serve Him in this world so you can become eternally happy with Him in the next. That means you need to free up your time to
Know Him
Study – get to know about Him
Pray – move from knowing about Him to knowing Him intimately
Love Him
Pray – establish a heart-to-heart connection to God
“Stop and smell the daisies” – Recognize His love in Creation
Serve Him
Liturgy – the Liturgy (the “work” of the Church) is the way God has given us to serve Him directly
Serve others – means serving God’s Family within the Covenant
Prudence is the moral virtue that helps us to handle the distractions in our life so we can live deliberately and be free to focus on our relationship with God.
Bottom Line:
It’s not how holy you are now that matters in your spiritual growth, it’s how committed you are to grow in holiness.
And a great way to commit yourself to grow in holiness is to establish habits that open your heart to what God wants to do in you through his grace. From the Abbey can help you grow in the spiritual virtues such as prudence that strengthen your spiritual life so you can deepen your relationship with God. Sound good to you? Please check out the special opportunity below to get more involved in our program!
Brought to you by Jeffrey S. Arrowood at From the Abbey, dedicated to helping you rediscover the JOY of learning and living your faith so you can grow in intimacy with God.
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