Salesian Literature

Chapter 1  :  All virtues are pleasing to God

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Virtue is so attractive that God rewards it wherever he finds it.  The pagans – even though they could not be counted God’s friends – occasionally practised such natural moral virtues as come within the scope of rational individuals … with little enough result, Theotimus, as you can well imagine. Eye-catching virtues, that is all they were; in themselves they did not amount to much.  The intention of those who practised them was not high enough.  All their efforts (as St. Augustine says[1]) were dictated either by worldly honours or by some other trivial goal such as keeping the conventions of polite society, or by a faint tendency to goodness.  As long as this tendency met with no serious opposition, it led them to certain acts of virtue – to mutual courtesy, for instance, to helping friends, to moderate living, to honest dealing, to loyal service of employers, to paying employee’s wages.  Yet, imperfect as all this was, God counted it to their credit, even rewarded them for it generously.

 

 Though  the pagans (as St. Paul assures us [Rom. 2:14]) have no law to guide them, there are times when they carry out the precepts of the law unbidden.  Surely, when they do this, they are doing what is good, and God sets store by it.  The pagans knew that marriage was good, was necessary.  They saw that it was appropriate to train their children in the arts, in patriotism, in the social graces; and they did so.  I leave you to decide whether or not God was pleased with those things; after all, that was his purpose in giving man the light of reason and natural instinct.

 

Natural reason is like some good tree that God has planted in us; its fruits cannot but be good too.  Of course, in comparison with the fruits that come from grace, the fruits of nature are worth little; for all that, they are not worthless.  God values them; he bestows temporal rewards on them.  For example, he repaid the moral virtues of the Romans (according to St. Augustine[2]) with the vast extent, the splendid renown of their empire.

 

Sin undoubtedly makes the soul sick, makes it incapable of any great or energetic activity. But it can still manage little things, for not all the actions of sick people are sickly – they may still speak, see, listen, drink.  A sinner can perform actions which are naturally good, which win a natural reward; he can also do things which are socially good, for which he is pain in human coin – temporal advantages.  Sinners are not like devils whose wills are so steeped in evil, so identified with it, that they cannot even have a good intention.  No, the sinner in this world is not like that.  He simply lies on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, fatally wounded, but still alive.  He has been left, in the words of the gospel (Lk. 10:30), half-dead; and being half-dead, his actions are only half-hearted.

 

Of course the sinner can keep one or two of the commandments here and there; he can even keep them all for a little while – as long as he does not find it too difficult not temptation too great.  But for a sinner to continue for very long in his sinful state without adding fresh sins to those he has committed already – most assuredly, this would be impossible without God’s special protection.  If we do win through, it is God who gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ, as St. Paul says (1 Cor. 15:57).

 

Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation (Mt. 26:41).  If our Lord had said watch only, we might imagine that we could survive on our own; but since he added pray, he shows us that if the soul has not the Lord for its guardian in time of temptation, then vainly the guard keeps watch (Ps. 126:2).

 

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[1]  City of God 5. 12.

[2]  City of God 5.15.

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