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SEPTEMBER 6, 2007
The Virtue of Temperance
Dealing with pleasure has always been a difficult challenge for us human beings. How easily we tend to extremes: to “grit-your-teeth-and-bear-it” stoicism on one hand or to over-the-top pleasure-seeking on the other. Finding a happy medium is the role of the virtue of temperance.
Search for order
Temperance, also known as moderation, searches for order and preserves its harmony, especially the order God has designed within each person. It makes possible a healthy love of self, an avoidance of self-destructive behavior and a cultivation of self-preserving habits in concrete actions such as eating, drinking and sexual conduct.
Where temperance is absent, obsessions multiply, aberrations spread, delusions of grandeur sprout up, and self-gratifications lead to self-destruction. Intemperance inevitably sows the seeds of despair. As St. Paul writes to the Ephesians (4:19), “…they have become callous and have handed themselves over to licentiousness for the practice of every kind of impurity to excess.” Temperance, to the contrary, liberates from obsessive cravings and attunes the heart to the beauty of God’s order in creation and within oneself.
Three kinds of moderation are needed to forge the virtue of temperance: sobriety in regard to drink and drugs, abstinence in regard to food, and chastity in regard to sexual conduct. These kinds of moderation enable us to follow the exhortation of St. John (I Jn 2:15-17), “Do not love the world or the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, sensual lust, enticement for the eyes, and a pretentious life, is not from the Father but is from the world. Yet the world and its enticement are passing away. But whoever does the will of God remains forever.”
What temperance is not
False notions about temperance abound.
Some contend that it kills passion and curbs joy, i.e. that its purpose is to take the fun out of life and to suppress strong emotions. In fact, its purpose is to safeguard joy and to ensure freedom, which are destroyed by excess but protected by discipline. Moreover, temperance, far from eliminating our passions, enables us to harness and use them for good. This is why St. Thomas Aquinas defends anger, contending that this natural passion is placed in us by God to strengthen us in opposing what is wrong and in persevering in the face of trials. St. Gregory the Great writes (Moralia, 5:45), “Reason opposes the evil more effectively when anger ministers at her side.” To be sure intemperate manifestations of anger, such as rage, bitterness or revenge, serve no good purpose. But anger disciplined by reason strengthens us to resist what is wrong and gives us courage to stand for what is right.
Another common objection to temperance is that it reflects contempt for the world. Supporters of this objection often cite passages from the Bible, especially the writings of St. John such as the one quoted above, i.e. “Do not love the world… the world and its enticements are passing away.” In order to understand correctly what St. John and other human authors of the Bible intended, we must see their words in the larger context of all the Sacred Scriptures, and especially in the light of original sin’s impact on the world.
Christians rightly have contempt for the world in its fallen state because of the difficulties the fallen world presents to virtuous living. But we do not have contempt for the world that God created and for the persons in the fallen world whom He is redeeming in Christ. Temperance helps us to live in this fallen world with our hearts set on the world that will never end.
Saved from chaos
One of the striking features of the creation story in the Book of Genesis is that God brings order out of chaos. Out of “a formless wasteland, and darkness [that] covered the abyss” (Gen 1:2), God brought forth the beauty of creation. Everything God created was good, especially the human beings to whom He gave dominion over the rest of creation. As long as they exercised this dominion virtuously, it served the good of all created beings. But when they sinned, it wrought chaos.
The virtue of temperance saves us from chaos. At first glance, temptations to intemperance look enticing and exciting, especially in a narcissistic society that pushes selfish gratification and sells over-indulgence as a ticket to happiness. But why is this same society bloated with multiple addictions that destroy the fabric of families and wreak havoc on individual lives? If we do not control our natural urges, soon they control us. This is not freedom, but slavery.
Without temperance, harmony with God and His creation is impossible, and so is harmony and balance within oneself. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains clearly why this is so (#1809), “Temperance is the moral virtue that moderates the attraction of pleasures and provides balance in the use of created goods. It ensures the will’s mastery over instincts and keeps desires within the limits of what is honorable. The temperate person directs the sensitive appetites toward what is good and maintains a healthy discretion.”
Temperance allows us, with St. Francis of Assisi, to praise God for the goodness of creation and to enjoy its fruits with discipline and freedom. Above all, it allows us to love God and neighbor with an extravagant love that knows no bounds.
Copyright 2007 The Catholic Sun.
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