Approaching Virtue

As I mentioned yesterday, I've been reading Karen Swallow Prior's On Reading Well. The subtitle of the book is this: "Finding the Good Life through Great Books."

"The good life" is of course many things to many people, but for Prior it is a life of virtue. Or perhaps it is better to say, a life of the virtues.

Prior lists 12 virtues (see yesterday's post), Ben Franklin had thirteen, and a quick search of the Internet will get you lists of up to 400 virtues. I probably started thinking about virtue a little more rigorously after I read Jonathan Pennington's book on the Sermon on the Mount called The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing, in which Pennington talks about the purpose of the sermon as one of virtue formation. Pennington, like Prior, connects the good life with the virtuous life.

I intend to reread Pennington's book soon and discuss it here, but for now I have a simple question for myself and perhaps for you as well: what virtue are you most lacking, most in need of, at present? I suppose this is another way of asking, what sin is giving you the most difficulty these days?

Using a list like Prior's, or perhaps Franklin's, or using a shorter list like the cardinal virtues or the theological virtues, pinpoint one of them in particular and ask yourself, how do I acquire more of this? The beginning of an answer (and middle and end) is in the most virtuous person who ever walked the earth: Jesus.

On the day of his baptism in the Jordan River a voice from heaven was heard: "This is my beloved son. Listen to him." (Matthew 3:17)