Tuesday november 13, 2007
 When the Church inquires into a person's life with the view of proclaiming him/her a saint, evidence of heroic virtue is required. Benedict XIV thus describes this kind of virtue: "In order to be heroic, a Christian virtue must enable its owner to perform virtuous actions with uncommon promptitude, ease, and pleasure, from supernatural motives and without human reasoning, with self-abnegation and full control over ones natural inclinations." A heroic virtue, then, is a habit of good conduct that has become a second nature, a new motive power stronger than all corresponding inborn inclinations, capable of rendering easy a series of acts each of which, for the ordinary person, would be beset with very great, if not insurmountable, difficulties. Such a degree of virtue belongs only to souls already purified from all attachment to things worldly, and solidly anchored in the love of God.
"To keep ones minds intent always on God”: to put it mildly, the Founder’s aspiration is more than difficult as anyone who tries to put it into practice for even a short time becomes only too well aware. Despite our best resolve, a jumble of other thoughts and concerns jostle aside all thoughts about God and we return to our usual unreflecting way of life, reacting to events in an instinctive fashion and judging according to human standards and criteria. However, at some time or other, all of us have met people who seemed to be able to accomplish this extraordinary ‘feat’ of being at the same time both intent on God and particularly present to others. There was no contradiction or discontinuity in their lives, becoming ‘pious’ or ‘religious’ when such was expected of them and then reverting to being ‘sensible’ in all other things. Everything and everyone were seen ‘sub specie aeternitatis’ (in the light of eternity). The Founder was such a person and whilst we have divided, for convenience sake, his many letters into the ‘ascetical’ and ‘general’ category, the latter still carry the mark of his deep spirituality. In computer language, it could be said that the ‘God programme’ was always running in the background of his personality and make-up, constantly monitoring and influencing his thinking and speech and coming easily and effortlessly to the foreground as the occasion demanded.
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