Hello, this is William Michael of the Classical Liberal Arts Academy. I’d like to challenge Catholic parents, especially fathers, with, I think, what will be a brief talk today on the importance of natural virtue in the education and evangelization of our children.
When I talk about natural virtue, obviously, the opposite of that would be supernatural virtue. If we look at the teaching of the Catholic Church, we find that there are two different groups of virtues, two different classes of virtues. One group we might consider classical or human virtues—I would consider them natural virtues—and the other class is called theological virtues. I would refer to them as supernatural virtues. We have these two classes of virtues: one class being natural and one class being supernatural.
Now, there’s historical significance in this division because the natural virtues are not something that the Catholic Church developed and explained. Natural virtues were taught throughout ancient history, before the rise of Christianity, before Christ came into the world. Aristotle teaches on the four natural virtues. The supernatural, or theological, virtues are Christian virtues; they are produced by the grace of God in the souls of Christian men and women.
The supernatural virtues are not really in our control, especially with respect to other people. We might say that supernatural virtues are in our control, since we can collaborate with God’s grace and pray, and we can merit greater grace and pray for greater grace. Jesus assures us that when we ask for the Holy Spirit, God will give it to us. But we don’t have the power to give the Holy Spirit or to give these supernatural graces—supernatural virtues—to others.
Now, to name them, the natural virtues or the classical virtues are temperance—temperance or self-control, that’s the first; then there’s courage or fortitude, that’s the second; and then justice is the third; and finally, prudence. Temperance, fortitude, justice, and prudence. And again, these were known among ancient men and were taught by the ancient philosophers centuries and centuries before the Christian era.
Temperance, fortitude, justice, and prudence—just listen to those four virtues and imagine a man in whom those four virtues are present. Imagine a man characterized by those four virtues—a temperate man, a man of fortitude or courageous man, a just man, a prudent man. That’s the man of natural virtue.
The supernatural virtues, or the theological virtues, are faith, hope, and charity. Faith, hope, and charity. So now imagine the man characterized by the virtues of faith, hope, and charity. Faith, hope, and charity. We can have these two personas: one characterized by the four classical virtues—we might imagine him to be a Greek or a Roman man who lived before Christ—and then this Christian saint, filled with faith, hope, and charity. Of course, the classical virtues would be present in this Christian man as well. But we’ve got these two personas, these two characters.
Now, the difference between these two characters as far as parenting is concerned is that the man who is filled with the supernatural virtues—we cannot form that man. Parents can’t form that man. That man has to be collaborating freely, voluntarily, with God’s grace. He has to be seeking those virtues. He has to be seeking God’s grace. He has to be responding rightly to God’s grace. When St. Thomas Aquinas answered the question, “What must I do to be a saint?” he said, “You must will it.” So we can’t give to our children the virtues of faith, hope, and charity—the virtues by which we’re saved. And so we can continue to reason from that and say, we cannot give our children what they need for salvation. We cannot save our children’s souls.
The old catechism said, “What must we do to save our souls?” And the answer was, “We must worship God by faith, hope, and charity.” We must worship God by faith, hope, and charity. Notice the wording of the question: “What must we do to save our souls?” We must worship God by faith, hope, and charity. We can’t give faith, hope, and charity to others. We can pray for others that God will give them faith, hope, and charity. We can exhort others to seek faith, hope, and charity. But we can’t give anyone faith, hope, and charity.
So, in education, our goal really is not to raise saints because that’s beyond the job description of any parent or educator. Our job is not to raise saints. Our job is not to save our children’s souls—that’s beyond us. Our job, I would argue, is to properly dispose our children to faith, hope, and charity. To properly dispose them. In other words, our job is to prepare them to appreciate, seek, and receive faith, hope, and charity. To train them to appreciate, seek, and receive faith, hope, and charity.
But ultimately, there’s a bridge that’s going to need to be crossed, and that bridge can only be crossed by their will. They must will it, and their will may not come to take up that challenge. It may not accept that challenge until they’re 80 years old or 60 or 40 or 25—and that wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter if it came on their last breath. It wouldn’t matter. But we can’t cause that conversion to happen. We can’t give our children these virtues. We can’t force them into these virtues, but we can properly dispose them to these virtues.
Recently, in a tutoring meeting, I discussed this when I was talking about Aristotle’s ethics, and I compared it to gardening. I compared it to gardening, where the farmer has work to do. He has a job to do. He goes out and clears a field, prepares the soil, pulls out all the weeds, pulls out all the stones, plows the soil, tills the soil, fertilizes—maybe tills the soil again. He works to prepare the soil for planting and for a fruitful harvest months away.
But it’s strange to think of what the farmer or gardener does because there are a thousand things that have to happen for him to reap the fruits of that harvest that are not in his control. The weather has to support the germination of the seeds; it can’t be too cold, too hot, too wet, or too dry. It has to be just right. He can’t control the weather.
Throughout the growing season, there needs to be a steady supply of rainwater. Field crops can’t be watered with a hose—hardly anyone can afford to water crops with any kind of artificial irrigation. The farmer is dependent on rain, but not flooding destructive rains. He needs gentle rains—rains that provide a good amount of water and then stop, allow the land to dry, and then come back and provide more water and stop. There’s got to be sunlight, the air has to be warm, and there can’t be any outbreaks of pests or diseases among the crops.
There are so many different things that are needed that are beyond the control of the farmer, and yet he still prepares the soil. And it’s very toilsome work, but he does that work. And when he does that work, he manifests, to a degree, the virtue of hope. He hopes for a harvest. He hopes for a harvest. He pulls the weeds out of that soil, knowing that a harvest is not in his control. He pulls the stones, he tills, knowing that the harvest is not in his control. But he understands what his job is: he understands that his job is to dispose that plot of land, to dispose that soil to fruitfulness, to prepare it to be fruitful. He can’t make it fruitful, but he can prepare it to be fruitful. And as it grows, he can cultivate it, nurture it, try to protect it, and support its growth.
But unless the weather is just so, unless the rain is just so, unless the temperature is just so, there won’t be a harvest. And yet, the farmer works. And parenting or education is like the work of the farmer in this sense: he can’t control the outcome; he can’t be sure of the outcome; he can’t say, “We will have a fruitful harvest.” He can only say, “We hope to have a fruitful harvest.” And there’s one thing that he can be sure of: if he does not do his work, there will definitely be no fruitful harvest. If he doesn’t do his work, there will definitely be no fruitful harvest.
So, he is responsible, and he can make sure that there can be a fruitful harvest. And that’s the duty of Christian parents and school teachers: to prepare that soil, to dispose it to those graces of faith, hope, and charity, just as the farmer prepares the soil to receive the good weather that causes the seed to sprout and grow and produce an abundant harvest. That’s the work of parenting and education.
So the question then is, how do we dispose a child to these graces? I should say, rightly dispose. How do we rightly dispose a child to the virtues necessary for salvation? The answer is by cultivating in the child the natural virtues. By cultivating the natural virtues.
Now there’s a concept that I’ve thought about for a long time, and I was talking about this idea with my wife recently. What I said to her was, “What if the history of the human race is an illustration of the life of an individual man? What if the history of the human race is something of a parable of the life of an individual man?”
If we think about it, the history of the world starts in the same place where an individual man starts, in Genesis, chapter one: “In the beginning, God made heaven and earth.” Then, we go through the history of God’s dealings with men. We have the fall of man, the promise of a Redeemer, the growth of the human race, the establishment of liturgical religion in ancient Israel, looking forward to a day of fulfillment. We have this growth under the law, this moral instruction under the law, the study of philosophy developing outside of that religion, and the experience of the human race being gathered.
We see the formation of the human race almost as the formation of an individual man, as I said—growing in philosophical learning, growing in experience, growing in religious learning and practice. Then we come to the Incarnation, when Christ comes into the world, when Christ enters into the human race. The human race is united to Christ, and all of the fruits of the life of Christ fill the human race. I’ve thought about this a lot: how the history of the world can be considered an illustration of the life of a redeemed man.
It’s worth noting, I think, that God did not create the world, allow Adam and Eve to fall into sin, and then immediately send Christ as the Redeemer. He held back Christ as the Redeemer for several thousand years. He allowed men to live without the Redeemer, before the Redeemer. Then, we read the phrase in the Scriptures: “In these last days.” There’s this idea that Christ came into the world in the latter days, in the fulfillment of time. What that really means is that when God was pleased to send His Son into the world, Christ came into the world.
Who’s to say the timing wasn’t right? Who’s to say He came too late? Who’s to say He should have come sooner? Who’s to say, “I was there in 1000 BC, and there was no Redeemer, so I quit,” or “I was there in 500 BC, and there was no Redeemer, so I gave up”? Who are we to say when the right time was for the Savior to come into the world? He came at the time chosen by God.
If we look at the conversions of different men who were present in the life of Christ, whose lives are taught to us in the Scriptures, we see all sorts of different experiences. We see Peter following Christ from the beginning. We see the thief following Christ in the last moments of his life. We see St. Paul following Christ after spending time persecuting Him. We see all different men and women coming to Christ at different points in time in their lives, in different circumstances, under different influences, and so on.
We see that this business of salvation is really not in any human control. This business of salvation is really between God and individual souls. God is working in the hearts and minds of all human beings, leading millions and millions, even billions, of souls to redemption, and the time of their conversion varies. There are some Christians who can’t remember a day in their life when they weren’t Christian. There are others who convert and are baptized on their deathbeds, and then there is just an infinite variety of ways and means by which people come to faith in Christ and are converted and see their lives transformed.
There’s no strict formula for how God leads men to salvation. The reason why I share all that is because when we come to parenting, we think about our children. In parenting, we almost have a certain timeline that we expect things to be done by, and it’s really ridiculous if you think about it. When parents have children, they get this idea that they’re in control of their children’s lives, and the test of their parenting and education is that the child will be fully formed in Christ, fully responsive, fully collaborative, and full of zeal before he moves into his own independent life as an adult.
We can see how arrogant this is because parents want to see it happen when the kid is young, before their independence, before their adulthood, because the parents are seeking to take credit for it: “I did that. We taught him. We raised him to be like that.” That’s a dangerous way to think because that’s not how salvation takes place.
In comparing it again with the illustration of the gardener, it’s worth noticing that one of the things that God warned the Jews about when He brought them out of Egypt and was bringing them into the Promised Land, was that none of them should ever say, “By the strength of my hand, I have obtained this wealth,” because everything that they had was given to them by God. The temptation, once they had obtained what they desired, was to say, “By the strength of my hand, I have obtained this.”
I think that’s why there’s a whole culture around Christian parenting, where the conversion of a person while he is still dependent on his parents is taken by those parents as something to boast about, to claim as their own work, to claim as their own achievement, to use as verification of their true religion. We’ve created this artificial timeline, which contradicts just about everything Christ teaches us, and we use it to judge ourselves and others—even though we know the variety of conversion experiences throughout history and even among the Church’s most famous saints.
I always think about the fact that St. Augustine was not baptized until he was in his 30s. St. Ignatius of Loyola’s conversion experience happened later in life, in his 30s or maybe even close to 40. St. Francis’s conversion experience came as an adult. We have these examples of some of history’s greatest and most heroic saints converted with no reference to their parents—God working in their souls at different times in different ways, through all different instruments, all different people, and all different means, leading them to conversion at times that there’s no explanation for.
Yet, we have this franchised Christianity where we’ve mapped out this process and declare parents to be successes or failures.
Now, one thing I always think about is the story of the prodigal son. He goes away, off into sin, as an adult. According to this artificial plan of salvation, that father would be a failure as a Christian father because his adult son left the house and fell away, wandered away from the family religion. That man would be a failure. Yet that man is said to represent God in that parable. That father is said to represent our Heavenly Father. Clearly, he’s not a failure. Clearly, that’s not what failure looks like—to have a son go astray, to wander, to abandon the family religion, to leave home (symbolically leaving everything, including religion) and waste himself in the world.
If that is the definition of failure for a father or for a child, if that’s the definition of failure, then God is presented to us in that parable as a failure, at least at that point in time. But, of course, we know the latter end of the story: the child comes home, repents of his sin and foolishness, confesses his sin, and life is better than ever. But you see how we establish this artificial measure, and we need to learn to stop doing that because this work of gardening is much more difficult and more complex than that. The farmer doesn’t control the influences, but his job is to work and work and persevere until the very end, when there’s no more time for anything to grow, the growing season is taken away from him. He can then say, “This year we had no crop, we had no harvest, but I did everything that I was supposed to do. I did everything that I could do.”
Therefore, he can say that this apparent failure was God’s will. Then, he would get ready for the next growing season.
When we look at our children, I think the first thing we have to do is to get rid of this artificial timeline. Realize that it’s totally irrelevant. Now, there are some milestones that the Church establishes for us, like baptism, first communion, confession, and confirmation. There are some, but even those are artificial.
We have some milestones to look at, but there really is no humanly speaking timeline. There’s no artificial schedule for the work of salvation in a soul. Our task is that of the gardener, which is to shut up and do our job, to not judge the harvest, to not judge the crop, to not try to judge the season. If we’re a couple of weeks into the season and there’s bad weather, we shouldn’t say, “Forget it; oh well, not this year. This isn’t going to work.” We don’t have the authority to make judgments. Our responsibility is to work until the end and do everything we can to bring about the harvest.
This is what I think the work of education and parenting is really supposed to feel and look like. We can’t control all the factors necessary to bring about the salvation of one of our children or students, but like the farmer, we’re responsible for preparing the soil. We’re responsible for doing all the work assigned to us and taking no thought for the outcome, because that’s not in our control. We’re not to try to guess what might happen or forecast where this season is headed so we can excuse ourselves from the work. We’re to work until the end and do everything we can to bring about that harvest. It’s our job.
When we come to parenting, if we have that mindset, the goal is to prepare our children for the reception of those supernatural graces or virtues. We’re to prepare our children just as a farmer prepares his garden or his field for the reception of good weather and rains necessary for a harvest. We’re to work to properly dispose our children for those graces, for that life of salvation, so that if it comes to them, they recognize it, appreciate it, and pursue it. They receive it. They receive it as the Virgin Mary received the message of the angel Gabriel, saying, “Be it done unto me according to thy word.”
That’s what it means to be properly disposed to grace—to receive it and then prepare oneself to be worthy of greater grace. St. Paul tells us to desire the greater spiritual gifts. So, we have to work to prepare our children.
Think about what John the Baptist did: as it’s described, he was to “make straight the way of the Lord.” He was sent to prepare the way. He was sent to call the Jewish people to repentance, to set their hearts right so that they would be prepared for the coming of the Messiah. That’s the work of the preacher, the teacher, the parent: to prepare for the coming of the Lord. We can see what that looks like in the life of John the Baptist, in all of human history. We can see what that looks like—how God prepared the whole human race for the coming of Christ.
To properly dispose our children, I would argue that the cultivation of the four natural virtues is the means by which that’s to be done. It may be disappointing for Christian people to hear that because we want our children to be religious, spiritual, to talk about religious things, to do religious things, to be inspired and moved by religious things. But they’re often not interested in religious things; they’re not properly disposed to religious things; they’re not prepared for religious things. So, we have to do the work of preparation. And what I would argue the work of preparation is, is the cultivation of these four natural virtues: temperance, fortitude, justice, and prudence.
Now, the reason why this is on my mind recently is because I have a son who’s 17 years old, and he’s quite an amazing kid. I wouldn’t say that he’s religious. He’s our oldest kid at home right now, and he’s getting ready to move on. I wouldn’t say that he’s a religious kid or that he’s spiritually minded, but he is extraordinarily virtuous. He’s a virtuous 17-year-old.
He is temperate, he is courageous, he is just, and he’s prudent. Over the past year, as he’s now the oldest, all of my attention as a father has focused on him as I help him finish up his last year at home and prepare for the beginning of his independent adult life. I spend a lot of time with him, usually in the evenings when I come home from the office. He’s sort of waiting, ready to talk. He’s spent the day studying, exercising, and doing all that he does, and he knows I’m coming home. He’ll be ready for me with 50,000 topics to discuss—things he’s studied, his workouts, what he learned about this war, this general, and so on. He has all these topics ready, and he basically talks my ear off until bedtime.
But he’s very virtuous, and he raises all sorts of discussions and topics—moral topics, questions about history, warfare, battles, military life, service, moral dilemmas, and more. He studies science, so he’ll bring up questions about sciences and whether these things agree with Christianity or make sense. We’ll just talk and talk. One thing I notice as we have these discussions is that the answer to all of his questions, the answer to the questions of this virtuous life, is religion.
Religion is the answer to all of the questions of his virtuous mind. Every discussion we have, it’s just a matter of time before it leads us to religion. He’ll ask a question or say something, and I’ll say, “That’s the point of religion. You’ve just come to the entrance door of religion. This is why it matters.” And I’ve seen, in a unique way, that my son Jacob is such a virtuous young person—the most virtuous child we’ve had so far. All of that virtue that’s in him leads him to the gateway of religion and spiritual things, and he gets it. He understands how religion is the next step in all of his thinking and living.
Just to give you some examples, he’s watched his older brothers and one of his sisters enter the military. He’s seen them—amazingly healthy, strong, courageous, temperate, and just. He knows that he’s stronger, more fit, and healthier than they were at his age. Now, if he wasn’t virtuous, he might say, “Military training will be so easy. If they can do it, I can do it easily,” because he truly is the strongest, healthiest, most agile, and fittest kid we’ve had.
My oldest son, Jonathan, can get perfect scores on fitness tests in the military, but Jacob is ahead of where Jonathan was at this age. So, Jacob totally understands the concept that “to whom much is given, much is expected.” He knows he’s stronger, he knows he’s more fit, he knows he’s healthier, he knows he’s better educated and smarter. Yet he doesn’t boast, because he understands that he’s challenged to do more and to do better than his older brothers.
In fact, he chose an MOS—which, in the military, is a career path—that would allow him, at age 17, to join the military and prepare for Special Forces. He had this plan, encouraged by a military friend, that as soon as he finishes his high school studies (scheduled to finish around Christmas, six months early), he would go straight into the military and aim for Special Forces. You can see how virtue is leading him to want to do more, to challenge himself, to pursue this path.
However, he ran into a wall. When he talked to the recruiter, he was told he couldn’t choose that path—he had to be 20 years old to qualify. All of Jacob’s plans were shot, and he was frustrated. He had trained, prepared, and wanted this challenge, but the opportunity wasn’t available. This is what Aristotle explains as the problem with a life dedicated to honor: honor is not in our control. Aristotle teaches that happiness lies in the pursuit of wisdom, in the contemplative life, because wisdom is within our control.
So, you can see how his experience—his virtue and dedication—is already teaching him. We move from his frustration over denied honor to Aristotle’s discussion of the superiority of the pursuit of wisdom or philosophy. His experience is leading him and showing him these things, but it’s only because of his virtue that he’s learning and talking about them.
In my son Jacob, I can see how his virtuous character has disposed him to engage deeply with moral and religious questions. He’s prepared for discussions on resurrection, judgment, eternal life, and the necessity of a judgment. His virtuous mind has prepared him for these conversations in a way that perhaps my other children, at the same age, were not as disposed to.
I talked about the timeline before because I see parents around me, and I work with thousands of parents. They’re always obsessed with this 18-year-old milestone, expecting their kids to manifest a zealous, independent faith before leaving home. Most of them don’t experience that, and they feel frustrated and blame the Church, society, or others. But I don’t believe that timeline is real.
I see my older children, now in their 20s, making progress, becoming more mature, prudent, and moving beyond the sins of their youth. I see them settling into adult life, maturing with age, and I can see that those artificial timelines and milestones are irrelevant. All of the kids have different experiences, dispositions, and situations in life. They each interact differently with God’s grace.
What I believe, based on my experience and studies, is that the degree to which we lead our children to natural virtue is the degree to which we prepare them for salvation. I’ll say that again: the degree to which we can prepare our children in virtue is the degree to which we have done our job like the gardener and prepared them for salvation—prepared them for the harvest. I’ve seen it clearly in my son, Jacob, who is currently finishing his high school studies.
So, this question of whether we can “raise saints” or “make our kids saved people”—people often use that language—is contrary to Christianity’s teaching, to experience, and to history. It’s simply not our job. Like the gardener, some people try to predict the future to justify ceasing their work early. They want an excuse to stop working, but the virtuous gardener has the opposite mind. He works until the end, no matter what, because that’s his job.
As parents and teachers, we need to train our children and students in natural virtue, not because we’re neglecting religion, but because we recognize there’s a progression. Our job is to prepare the soil. There are elements of this work of salvation that are not in our control, but the natural virtues are within our control. By focusing on natural virtue, we’re doing what’s in our control and taking responsibility for it. We’re preparing our children for the Gospel, for salvation, so they are able to appreciate, receive, and grow in it.
When we cultivate natural virtues—temperance, fortitude, justice, and prudence—we lead them closer to salvation by disposing them to it. That’s the challenge and task for parents, teachers, and evangelists. Be like the gardener and say, “I don’t know what the weather will be like or if pests will come, but I know the harvest depends on the work I must do, and I will do it.”
Training children in the natural virtues is the job of human parents and teachers. I hope this reflection helps.
God bless you,
Mr. William C. Michael, O.P.
Classical Liberal Arts Academy
