Last week we started thinking about the importance of the virtues as skills for the moral life, and forming who we are by training ourselves in the virtues. The question is, when we have to make a decision and act, which virtue applies now?

That’s where prudence comes in. Prudence does not mean (as it is so often used) being cautious. In ordinary life, we call someone prudent when they are careful with their money or when they take a long time to make decisions and rarely act quickly (if they act at all). Sometimes we call people prudent when they’re a bit dull and never take any risks. A virtuous person will have to take risks from time to time. The martyrs took risks. That doesn’t mean they were without prudence. So what exactly is this neglected virtue?

Prudence is the virtue that disposes practical reason to discern our true good in every circumstance and to choose the right means of achieving it.

—Catechism of the Catholic Church 1806

Prudence governs the other virtues. That’s why it’s so important. It’s the skill of knowing what virtues are called for here and now, in this given situation. And then, if we have the virtues we need, prudence sets them to work. Prudence is the control centre of the moral life. If you don’t have this virtue, no matter how much you grow in all the others, you won’t actually be able to put them to good use.

Because it is a skill — just like the other virtues — once we have obtained prudence, it works like an instinct, rather than a conscious decision. There’s no delay while we think about the moral choice before us. Prudence puts our other virtues into action straightaway.

We grow in prudence by learning to judge what is good and what will lead to that good outcome. Discerning our true good comes from knowing God’s laws, but most importantly, knowing him who is our ultimate good.

‘When he listens to his conscience, the prudent man can hear God speaking,’ the Catechism tells us (CCC 1777). The prayerful examination of our actions each day gives us a chance to learn from our experience — both good and bad — so as to act more quickly in the future. Then we try again the next day. All that prayer and study has to be put into practice, by trying to act well in difficult situations. We probably don’t need to go searching for these — difficult choices are quite good at finding us by themselves. The important thing is not to be so scared of making a wrong decision that we don’t act at all, just as we can’t be scared to play a wrong note when we learn the piano or to miss the goal when we learn to play football. There are few skills in life that anyone ever obtained without making mistakes along the way. Even our mistakes help us to grow in prudence, if we learn from that past experience.

We should want to grow in prudence because it makes life easier for us. We gain the ability to make good decisions without thinking about them, and making those good decisions quickly, we will make the choice to escape all kinds of temptations before we’ve even noticed they are there.

Christ is the supreme example of all the virtues, and when we know what to look for, we see prudence at work in the Gospels. He often had difficult decisions to make, and little time to make them. He knew when to stand up to the pharisees, and he knew when to vanish into the crowd. He knew when to work a miracle in front of everyone, and when to let only his closest disciples see his power. Most importantly, he knew when it was time not to run away, and when to put obedience and fortitude and love for the men and women he had come to save before the preservation of his own life.

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How is it that to call someone ‘virtuous’ is practically an insult in modern English? You might as well just use the word ‘boring’.

But the life of virtue is meant to be anything but boring. Not only are we meant to pursue virtue as Christians, but, as human beings, we should want to.

Virtue isn’t so much about what we do as who we are. We grow in virtue (or not) through our actions, but the point of acquiring a particular virtue is to shape our character. Growing in virtue is part of life for all human beings. We wouldn’t be particularly impressed with an adult who had the self-control of a toddler.

Growing up involves growing in virtue. A certain amount of that virtue grows quite easily in the right environment. When we are encouraged by our families and our friends, our school or our workplace to take on certain responsibilities for ourselves and for others, we have no option but to grow in the virtues we need to live and work with other people.

But that will only get us so far. The level of virtue society demands of us is not the same as the level God calls us to. The standard of our virtue is not meant to be our friends on earth, but our friends in heaven — those men and women the Church has recognised as examples of ‘heroic virtue’.

Every so often, a video will hit the news or social media and be watched by millions around the world because it shows someone doing something that is highly skilled, often to the point of being unbelievable. There’s no trick though. We know how they did it. Practice. And more practice. If you want to be a skilled athlete, musician or artist, you know that it takes practice and hard work. The same is true of the virtues.

Sometimes there are shortcuts. The Lord can, if he wants, give us a virtue we’ve never had to work for. But even in the Christian life virtues are normally acquired only with our co-operation. Because virtues are also skills. They are the skills of the moral life, of decision making and action. A temperate person can decide without hesitation when to stop eating. A patient man controls his temper without a second thought. And such people are able to act in this way because they have practised making the right decision over and over again.

The members of some religious communities make an explicit commitment to strive for one particular virtue each Lent. As Lent approaches, we can take the opportunity to ask ourselves what we would like to change about our character by the time we get to Easter. We don’t need to know the technical names of the virtue we need, and we don’t need to tell anyone else what we’re doing. We just need to identify one particular bad habit we want to overcome and do something each day to chip away at it.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and saints aren’t made overnight. Virtue requires a consistent, daily effort — like we see in the life of St Andrew Avellino, who promised God that he wouldn’t let a day pass without making at least some small progress in virtue.

If you’re still not sure where to start, help is on its way. The Church identifies seven principle virtues: the four cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance, and the three theological virtues of faith, hope and charity. We’ll be exploring each of these over the next seven weeks and looking at how we can make them part of our own good character.

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Born in 1629 in a stable in Verdun, Sebastian Valfrè (1629–1710) blessed in faith and piety began his training for the priesthood at 12 years old. Wishing with greater ardour to devote all to God and the salvation of souls, he entered the Congregation of the Oratory of Turin on the Feast of Our Holy Father St Philip, 1651, one year after being ordained sub-deacon. He saw St Philip as the model of a perfect priest, following his teaching in humility, visiting the hospitals and going from house to house among the poor, imploring them with his persuasive sweetness to abandon sin and turn to the services of the Church.

Blessed Sebastian’s love for the Oratory and St Philip is most evident in his obedience. Members of the Congregation live in community, under obedience, but without vows. While charity and love bind the community together, obedience “is the chart by which to sail for the shores of perfection and the port of a blessed eternity.” “Exact observance” of the customs and traditions of the Oratory and thus priestly life was Blessed Sebastian’s focus. This may lead us to imagine Blessed Sebastian as an uncompromising figure, but his gentle approach to obedience and stress on the existence of loving correction show otherwise. Blessed Sebastian writes that obedience is a path to perfection and that “by this path God wishes to lead us to heaven” — his perceived strictness very often hides his care and sole purpose in life for the salvation of souls.

He himself was a model of obedience. The one longing of Blessed Sebastian was to visit Rome and kneel in prayer in front of our own St Philip, but he had never been able to leave Turin. With the eventual permission and encouragement of his superior to go, Blessed Sebastian bade farewell to the Fathers and many friends and set out for Rome. As soon as the boat was about to depart, his travel companion handed him a note from their superior with the following message: “As soon as you have read these few lines you will immediately return to the Congregation, thinking no more of the journey to Rome.” Blessed Sebastian left the boat saying calmly, “Let us return home. The journey to Rome is delightful, and is at an end.”

Obedience is the path to perfection provided that the thing being commanded be not repugnant to the divine law. As Blessed Sebastian taught, to be obedient is to encourage yourself to turn your eyes to Christ, who for His love for us and through His perfect obedience was stripped, blasphemed, scourged, and crucified to ensure our salvation.

Historians today cast doubt on whether St Francis de Sales ever met St Philip, but we do know that he loved him. Whilst in Rome St Francis visited often the Vallicella and became friends with the early Fathers of the Oratory, especially Baronius, Gallonio and the Blessed Juvenal Ancina. St Francis was made bishop of Geneva at the same time as Blessed Juvenal was made bishop of Saluzzo and the two maintained their friendship through the exchange of letters. Eventually in 1603 they were able to meet again and Blessed Juvenal invited St Francis to preach. In thanking him for a fervent sermon Blessed Juvenal alluded to the name de Sales — “Vere tu es Sal — Truly, you are the Salt”; and Francis, to the name of the diocese of which Juvenal was bishop (Saluzzo), answered him: “Immo tu es Sal et Lux. Ego vere neque sal neque lux — On the contrary, you are salt and light, while I am neither salt nor light”. That is a charming little window into the spirit of humility shared by St Francis and the Oratory, and a testament to his friendship with our early Fathers.

This should come as no surprise, because St Francis was himself an Oratorian and a loving son of St Philip. This is not a fact that is made much of, but that is of course a very Oratorian thing to do. Inspired by his experiences of the Fathers in Rome and faced with the enormous task of calling the people of the Chablais away from Protestantism and back to the Church, St Francis founded an Oratory in Thonon. His plan was that this “Holy House” would provide a base for the Oratorian Fathers to concentrate on the sanctification of the local people especially through the worthy and solemn celebration of the liturgy of the Church. In September 1599 Pope Clement VIII erected the Oratory of Thonon with St Francis as its provost and approved their Rule, modelled on that of the Roman Oratory, and providing Baronius as the special protector of the house. It was a hard beginning because Thonon was a poor Oratory, but St Francis set to work establishing it as a school of prayer and virtue. He hoped that Blessed Juvenal would be allowed to join him, but it was not to be. In 1603 St Francis was called to rule the diocese of Geneva alone and thus to leave the Oratory — but his letters make clear that he would have preferred to have stayed. It was not easy to replace St Francis as provost and so in 1606 the pope made him provost of the Thonon Oratory again — not an easy task to achieve from afar and together with all his labours in the diocese.

Ultimately the Thonon Oratory did not last — through poverty and scarcity of devoted members. St Francis tried desperately to keep it — even trying to convince Cardinal Bérulle to include in his new French Oratory. Right up until his death in 1622 St Francis was trying to save his Oratory, but to no avail. If one goes to Thonon today one can see the basilica of St Francis de Sales and on its façade a mosaic of his beloved St Philip. The greatest testimony however to the Oratorian spirit of St Francis is his writings and his school of spirituality. Who else but a son of St Philip could remind us “that you can attract more flies with a spoonful of honey than with a whole jar of vinegar” and thus insist upon kindness, sweetness and real love when calling people to Our Lord?

“Be who you are and be that well…” St Francis exhorts us. Let us ask his prayers that we may be true sons and friends of St Philip as he was “…so as to bring honour to the Master Craftsman whose handiwork you are.”

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This week’s ‘mid-week’ reflection is a bit early, to share with you one of our Oratorian saints. There will be Solemn Benediction in honour of St Francis de Sales after the evening Mass today.

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These reflections are usually sent out each Wednesday to all those on our mailing list. Click here to sign up to our mailing list, and receive our Sunday E-newsletter and these reflections straight to your inbox.