A Note on Prudence:

            In paragraph 1806 of the Catechism one will find the following:

“Prudence is the virtue that disposes practical reason to discern our true good in every circumstance and to choose the right means of achieving it; ‘the prudent man looks where he is going.’ (Prov. 14:15)  ‘Keep sane and sober for your prayers.’ (1 Pet. 4:7)  Prudence is ‘right reason in action,’ writes St. Thomas Aquinas, following Aristotle.  It is not to be confused with timidity or fear, nor with duplicity or dissimulation.  It is called auriga virtutum (the charioteer of the virtues); it guides the other virtues by setting rule and measure.  It is prudence that immediately guides the judgment of conscience.  The prudent man determines and directs his conduct in accordance with this judgment.  With the help of this virtue we apply moral principles to particular cases without error and overcome doubts about the good to achieve and the evil to avoid.”

In a previous post I wrote about the use of prudence in making the decision to abandon wage-slavery so that one might have the freedom to care for the spiritual needs of his family as well as their material needs. 

The Catechism wonderfully points out that prudence is not to be confused with fear or timidity.  Cowardice is not prudence.  To let fear keep you in the bondage that keeps you from caring for your family as you ought is terribly imprudent, especially when considered in light of eternity.  Not only could your children and your spouse lose their souls because of your abnegation of your spousal and parental duties, you could lose your own soul for eternity for failing your duties.  Highly imprudent indeed.

However, rashness is also imprudent, and many families are not poised to make the jump out of wage-slavery right away.  Part of prudence is discerning the right means of achieving the good.  For a man whose family has $90,000 in school debt on top of a mortgage, a car loan, and credit card debt, it is highly imprudent to jump straight into yeomanry (i.e. the freedom of the small holder, craftsman, homesteader…).  He cannot expect to repay his debts from this kind of work and he is obligated to repay them.  Prudence, in choosing the right means for this man to get out of wage slavery must find a way to eliminate the debt justly.  This can mean any number of things, and it most certainly entails the virtues of patience and fortitude to achieve the good that he sees on the horizon and for which he is striving.

Likewise, a man who has no experience on the land and no skilled craft would be ridiculously imprudent to make the jump to yeomanry.  Prudence would mark out a path of apprenticeship in land or craft or both and would likewise demand patience and fortitude to achieve the good. 

I stand by my general assessment that our whole society is broken and is not functioning on a human scale.  It is not good for families or for individuals to be enslaved to debt, comfort, or a wage, or to be reduced to a “hand” in a factory or a cog in a machine.  But once that has happened, and it has, there is no quick fix.

In criticizing the “filthy, rotten system” I do not mean to encourage imprudent action that can quickly sink a family deeper in the mire.

I know a number of families who might be poised to make the imprudent decision of rashness.  They desperately want the freedom of the yeoman, but they either have a ton of debt or no skilled craft or experience on the land.  I pray for them, especially that they have the patience to continue the long road to freedom and to do what they can to get ready for the jump when the time comes. 

I also think that desperate times call for desperate measures and that the possibility of associations of debt-sharing and debt-alleviation might be true necessities if we are going to establish a just society where families can be what they are called by God to be.  While debt may have been incurred by the consent of a person, there are a lot of social pressures to take those debts on and many of us who went straight to college from high school had no real understanding of what debt meant when we signed away years of our lives to repaying tens of thousands of dollars so that we could have the “college experience.”  I think that Christian Charity calls for us to carry each other’s burdens if at all possible.  Our Lady of Ransom once called men to ransom Christian slaves and captives from the Muslims in the Holy Land.  Might she not be calling us now to ransom Christian slaves from a usurious system that has turned its back on the Gospel?

 However, I also know a number of families who are being sorely tempted to the imprudence of cowardice.  They have skills and experience.  They have land.  They have workspaces.  They have little or no debt.  And yet they are being told by so many “concerned” voices that they shouldn’t make this jump.  That they should continue working 50, 60, 70, or 80 hour workweeks so that they can fulfill their obligations to their families.  This is the voice of fear calling us to cling desperately to Mammon for our salvation.  This is the lie that says that working for a big corporation or being a member of union will provide our security.

Let me say this once and for all: THERE IS NO SECURITY OUTSIDE OF GOD’S HANDS.  I’ve known men with extremely “secure” jobs who lost them over night and were out of work for months.  I’ve known huge corporations who thought they could take over the world and who tanked overnight.  It is a materialist LIE FROM HELL that we will ever make our own security. 

Total abandonment to Divine Providence is the only security.  Seeking first the Kingdom is the only security.  Living so poorly that you haven’t far to fall when the economy collapses is the only security.  God alone is our provider.  God alone is our hope.  If He wills it, no obstacle can stop it. 

If you are without skills or experience or in heaps of debt or both and yet you feel a desperate longing for freedom, then pray to the Holy Spirit for prudence to show you the way to travel and for the fortitude to take that path.  And be patient on the way.  God does not need silver or gold.  He only needs souls to say, “Yes” without conditions.

If you have the skills and no debt and the only thing keeping you from the freedom that you need to truly fulfill your obligations to your family is fear for your own providence, then consider the lilies and the birds of the air and pray for the prudence you need to walk the right path which lies right at your feet.

Quid hoc ad aeternitatem? What is it worth in the light of eternity? – St. Bernard

Taking Christ at His Word

 

            Living in a disposition of radical trust in Divine Providence is not incompatible with family life.

            Jesus said, “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them.  Are you not of more value than they? … Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.  But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?  Therefore do not be anxious…”

            When He said this, He was speaking to each of us.  This was not exclusively directed at consecrated religious or priests.  This was directed at all of mankind.

            Jesus was saying that complete dependence on Divine Providence is normal to mankind, and especially to His followers. 

            Now, this dependence necessarily looks different for a family than for a convent, but that doesn’t change the fact that both are called to radical dependence on God. 

            By our very nature, we are dependent on His love for our existence.  We do not subsist in ourselves.  We need Him, not just for our next breath, not just for the next beat of our heart, but for our very being.  If He should cease to love us, we would not simply die, we would be annihilated – we would lose our existence. 

            It is a lie of the materialist heresy that we are dependent solely on ourselves, that we are in control, that we are God.  We are not.  We are not the Creator.  We are creatures dependent on our Creator.  To forget this is to lose the source of our peace and joy in this life. 

            Whether we want to acknowledge it or not we need Him.  And whether we believe it or not, He wants to take care of us.  He is a loving Father.  He wants His children to trust Him.  He wants them to thrive and flourish.  He wants them to be happy, to be at peace.  He wants them to be with Him forever.

            The dependence of a family on Divine Providence is necessarily different than a religious’ dependence – just like a hand’s dependence on the heart is different than the eye’s dependence on the heart.  But both are equally dependent.

            What troubles me is that families who want to radically give themselves to Christ (in a way befitting a family) are counseled under the guise of “prudence” not to go “too far.”  They are counseled to settle for wage-slavery – although, they call it “financial security.”  They are being told that mediocrity is the lot of family life.  If they wanted to be saints, they should have become priests or religious.

            I wonder what Our Lady and St. Joseph think about this “prudential” counsel?  I wonder what Sts. Louis and Zelie Martin think about this?  Or Sts. Isidore and Maria?  Or Sts. Adrian and Natalia or Sts. Timothy and Maura or any number of the multitude of married saints? 

            Mediocrity is not the lot of any Christian. 

            The problem is that, as a society, we tend to equate obscurity with mediocrity.  Most families are called to obscurity.  But that has nothing at all to do with mediocrity.  The Holy Family lived in obscurity.  Jesus Himself spent 30 years in obscurity.  St. Anthony, St. Mary of Egypt, and all the desert fathers and mothers, and all the hermits and cloistered religious who followed their examples did not settle for obscurity, they sought it out.  And nobody would call any of them mediocre.

            In telling families to pursue holiness, to pursue greatness, we are not telling them to pursue notoriety or fame.  That is what the world, the flesh and the devil tell them to pursue.  We say that pursuing holiness means pursuing obscurity.  If God calls us out of obscurity then we must obey, but even so, we must learn to love the hidden life. 

            To choose wage-slavery which strips a man of his ability to be present to his family because he wants a “secure” paycheck is settling for mediocrity.  Especially if this man sees his family suffering in his absence and still is unwilling to make the jump of trust in Divine Providence that would allow him to structure his life so that he is with his family, he is being cowardly not prudent.  It is never prudent to be a heretic.  Materialism says that the needs of the body are of the highest importance.  Choosing to bring in a paycheck to provide for their needs (and their superfluous desires) and neglecting their emotional, relational, and spiritual needs for a father (or a mother) is to embrace materialism and all its ill effects. 

            I am not saying that prudence is not essential – it most certainly is, especially in the decision to go completely against the current and free oneself from wage-slavery in order to be present to one’s family – but prudence is not cowardice.

            The Catechism defines Prudence thus: “The virtue which disposes a person to discern the good and choose the correct means to accomplish it.”  The exercise of prudence leads us to the conclusion that, because the spiritual good of our family is of higher importance than their material good, we must not allow the material welfare of our family to become an obstacle to their spiritual welfare. 

Work is ordered to the good of the family.  The family is not to be sacrificed to Mammon on the altar of work, even under the guise of “doing our duty” to provide for the family.  Our duty is to assist each member of our family on his or her path to heaven.  Yes, we are humans and we need material sustenance, but that does not change the fact that we are made for eternity and what a failure it would be to feed and clothe the body that will turn to dust and to completely neglect the soul which is eternal. 

I do not mean to imply that we ought not work for the material welfare of our family.  St. Paul wrote, “If any one does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his own family, he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”  Of course we must take up our legitimate responsibility of providing for the material needs of our families.  And we must work incredibly hard to do that.  BUT not to the detriment of providing for them spiritually. 

Hard work is required to provide for a family, but that work does not have to take a man or a woman away from home for hours upon hours every week.  In fact, it doesn’t need to take them away from home hardly at all.  For most of human history, work was done by both parents at home by the vast majority.  That meant that work time was not separate from family time.  That meant that work was not separate from education.  That meant that providing for the body was not a detriment to the soul, because in watching their parents work and in working alongside them, children learned the Christian virtues that can only be learned through apprenticeship – through discipleship to those to whom they were entrusted by God.