The Virtue of Prudence: Choosing the Greatest Good
What does it mean to nurture the moral virtue of prudence? A big part of it is to carefully consider and intentionally move toward the best possible good. Prudence is the cardinal virtue of identifying authentic human good and making a plan to attain it.
Prudence is the virtue of thinking about our choices and always trying to choose the best possible good. Click To TweetThere are three stages of prudence:
Step 1: Examining your own life, growing in the wisdom of what is right and wrong, forming your conscience (this is all one stage but we’ll treat it in two parts).
Step 2: Making a practical judgment of what is the best possible good through an exercise of conscience.
Step 3: Exercising your judgment to attain the good through planned, positive action.
The second stage of the moral virtue of prudence is to make a practical judgment of what is the best possible good. Just as the formation of your conscience must be based on the standard of God’s moral law, so too your practical judgments of what goods you will form your life around also need to be based on the objective standard of good and evil. Morality is God’s loving plan for our good – in this world and in eternity. It leads us to some specific goods that we want to be sure to make part of our life.
The Virtue of Prudence Orders Your Life to Happiness
Prudence is a vital virtue because it orders our lives around the things that are most important. If we can master prudence, we will find that we don’t have to struggle to “take time out” for the most important things. Everything we do will be ordered around the very things that bring us the most happiness.
1. Obviously the highest and most important good is our relationship with God. God is all good and worthy of all our love. He is the source of all that is good. When we are in the relationship of faith with Him, He desires to give it all to us.
2. Our next priority should be our human relationships. We are called not only to love God but to love God’s family. Our primary calling is to love within our vocation – our “school of love.” If you are married, your primary calling is to love your spouse and your children. But we are also called to love all of humanity. Human relationships fulfill us more than any other earthly pursuit. They move us from selfish desire to selfless use of our talents, skills and earthly goods for the sake of others. They also help us to experience transcendent goods in which we would not be able to share without relationships.
3. Prudence also moves us to become the best that we can be. That means growing in virtue. A virtue is a good moral habit that makes doing morally good actions part of our being. When we develop virtue, we go beyond doing good to being good. That’s the goal of the moral life. Virtues help us to live a fully human life, to hone our individual gifts, talents, and characters, and to love more easily and completely.
4. As we look about our world and see all of the goodness that God has placed into it, prudence directs us to use the good things of creation in ways that are authentically good and that put the Giver of the gifts first. We look for spiritual goods as well as physical goods, and we order all the goods in our life according to God’s purpose for them.
As we make daily decisions about how to order our lives, the virtue of prudence helps us to choose the greatest good in each situation. In the end, it helps us to order our entire lives toward what really matters. It, therefore, brings not only order but happiness. Isn’t moral virtue just awesome?
Prudence is one of the key spiritual virtues that make up a “lay rule of life” – empowering lay people to order their lives around God and His goodness. The spiritual virtues we teach at From the Abbey help you to build your relationship with God. From the Abbey helps you to learn and to live your faith. Below you will find an opportunity to get more involved with us. I hope you will join us!
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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