The Cardinal Virtue of Temperance: Finding Your Sweet Spot

Part of spiritual growth is to live a fully human life by adopting a life of virtue. That means that we are more than animals. Animals are driven by instinct and desire. Their main purpose in life is to preserve their physical life and to continue their species. Now, there is no doubt that human beings have these same drives and instincts. It’s part of having a physical body. But we are made for more. Our purpose goes beyond physical survival. We have a spirit that needs to be fed too. We have spiritual desires that are every bit as strong as – and much more important than – our physical desires. Desires for meaning, connection and love lead us to seek out what will lead us to a fully human life.

Unfortunately, our physical desires and our spiritual desires are often at odds with each other. Obsession with food, drink, and sex just doesn’t serve our quest to become our best, to have maximum relationships, or to live a meaningful life.

That’s where the virtue of temperance comes in.

The Cardinal Virtue of Temperance Defined

Temperance is the natural moral virtue of practicing self-control over our physical desires so that we can balance our enjoyment of physical goods. Let’s break that down:

• Cardinal Virtues are the four natural moral virtues that all other natural moral virtues “hinge” on. The word cardinal actually means “hinge.” In practical terms, if you grow in the cardinal virtues other related natural moral virtues become much easier to master.
• Natural virtues are those virtues that lead us to live a fully human life. The term natural refers to living according to human nature. It does not mean that practicing virtue comes naturally or easily to us. Other virtues help us have a relationship with God (supernatural virtues). There is actually a supernatural counterpart to temperance as well.
• Moral virtues are those virtues that affect what choices we make, and what kind of person we become. Other virtues affect our ability to know the truth (intellectual virtues) or our physical health (physical virtues).
• The balance that temperance brings to our lives is between the tendency to treat physical goods as gods and the overreaction to that tendency that thinks of physical goods as evil. The norm – or measure – of this balance is using physical goods according to their purpose as an authentic human good.

Finding Your Sweet Spot

So the cardinal virtue of temperance tells us that it is OK to enjoy physical pleasures such as food, drink, and sex as long as we use these physical goods according to their full purpose in human life.

1. Food – the main purpose of food is the health of the body, so to eat to the point of ruining our health would be an abuse of food. Food is also considered a social good since much of human fellowship happens around food. Going out to pizza with friends would be OK even if you’re not hungry. Living a temperate life does not mean that you can never eat the yummy fattening food that has little nutritional value. This food is often used to celebrate and can be considered a social good. But it should obviously not be what we eat all the time.
2. Drink – the main purpose of alcoholic drink is to be a “social lubricant,” like the secondary purpose of food. Used in moderation, alcohol can not only become something for people to gather around (“Let’s go out for a beer”) but can also help people to relax so they can enjoy each other’s company more completely. Drinking alcohol becomes an excess whenever you go beyond being “relaxed” to being “drunk.” Becoming dependent on alcohol – either chemically or socially – would also be beyond the balance that temperance calls us to.
3. Sex – the purpose of sex is to bond spouses together in an environment of love and then to create a new life to be born into this environment of love. In other words, the proper use of sex builds family love. The cardinal virtue of temperance does not call us to use sex as cold, pleasureless procreation. But we are also not to use each other for pleasure.

The awesome part of finding this balance is that it not only frees you to pursue your spiritual desires, it also tends to increase the enjoyment of physical goods. Compare the experience of having steak every night to the experience of saving steak dinners for special occasions. When it’s a special occasion, you savor every bite. When it’s a daily occurrence, you actually don’t enjoy it as much. You get used to the taste. It becomes the “same-old-same-old.”

I call the balance we find with the cardinal virtue of temperance “finding your sweet spot” in life because it really does give you the best of both worlds. And this makes sense because to be human means to be an integration of physical and spiritual. So being fully human would be having the best of both.

Your Next Action Step

Developing the four cardinal virtues, including temperance, is one of the keys to building a “lay rule of life.” They help us to participate in God’s goodness even while go about our daily tasks and duties as laypeople living in the world. Would you like to learn how to build this “lay rule of life”? Would you like to rediscover the JOY of learning and living your faith? I invite you to explore the opportunity below to get more involved with From the Abbey. We help you to learn more about your faith in online courses about different aspects of Catholic teaching. We help you to live your faith with our online spirituality program that teaches you practical ways to build a lay spirituality. Join us as we grow in holiness together!

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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