When it comes to building virtue, most of us experience what might charitably described as “mixed results.” For instance, my whole life I’ve specifically desired to become more patient and thoughtful. I’ve wanted to be a better gift-giver, more generous with my time, and less self-centered. After 44 years of confessing the same sins in these areas and rededicating myself to the same goal of overcoming them, I’ve seen some progress, but really not as much as there ought to be and not with any consistency. I’m still very much a work in progress.
Building virtue isn’t an easy task. It isn’t as simple as signaling the right sort of opinions, reading the right sort of book, belonging to the right in-group, or digging deep to unearth sufficient willpower. Virtue arises from the inner self. It’s a matter of character, and it’s only developed over long years of discipline and effort, making choice after choice for the good until it becomes habitual. Mountaintop transfigurations are encouragements along the way, but the real work takes place in the valleys.
For many years, I didn’t want to do the work so I sought easy spiritual solutions. I thought that God should just reach out with his magic touch and make me virtuous. I didn’t understand why other people around me seemed so much more steady in building virtuous habits while I careened wildly, some days accomplishing my goals and declaring victory only to fall back into the same old bad habits the very next day. I tried to imitate those virtuous people I admired, which isn’t a terrible idea, but I imitated the wrong things. I didn’t value the discipline that prompted their success. I wanted all the glory but failed to intuit that hard work was the foundation for the goodness that was shining through them.
In other words, I wanted a quick fix, a spiritual rapture that would change me overnight. I had a total misunderstanding of how virtue is cultivated.
One popular saint who I think is misunderstood in this regard is St. Teresa of Avila. Her biography is, to put it mildly, colorful. She was prone to intense spiritual raptures that she called “ravishments,” a word indicating just how overwhelming they felt to her. During them, her body would become rigid and cold. Her pulse would stop and she would seem to be dead. One of the raptures was particularly intense and she felt an angel pierce her heart with a golden dart. She later called it her “transverberation,” an experience that left her feeling lingering pain. At one point, she contracted an illness that left her paralyzed for three years. Her healing finally occurred at the intercession of St. Joseph. She was popular with the nobility for her sanctity and became a strong reforming force in the Carmelite Order.
And, oh yes, she would often fly.
For years, she would involuntarily begin to levitate during prayer. In the convent, it caused quite a commotion and St. Teresa found it deeply embarrassing. She begged God to stop the levitations so she and her sisters could pray in peace. In the meantime, she had her fellow nuns hold on tight to keep her on the ground.
In the midst of these ecstatic miracles, St. Teresa helped to found 32 new monasteries. So she wasn’t a marginalized, eccentric woman. She was talented, organized, and motivated. Today, she is a beatified saint and a Doctor of the Church, which means her writing is considered particularly insightful.
Why she's misunderstood
Here is where I think the misunderstanding comes in. We think that St. Teresa became great because of her spiritual gifts. It must have been her mystical visions that set her apart. It must have been the miracles that allowed her to become so holy. We believe that, to achieve that level of virtue, we need access to the same kind of spiritual consolations.
This isn’t what St. Teresa says, though. In fact, she teaches the opposite.
“I would not want any other prayer,” she writes, “than that which makes the virtues grow in me. If it should be accompanied by great temptations, dryness, and trials leaving me with greater humility, I would consider it a good prayer.”
Not only does she not seek a quick spiritual fix through miraculous signs and wonders, but she identifies difficulty in prayer as a gift. From this, we can glean the information that her inner virtue arises from a different source than we had supposed.
Fireworks vs real fire
This is good news. None of us can be St. Teresa. Vanishingly few of us, I suspect, have supernaturally levitated or had mystical visions. No, we cannot expect the same miracles that she experienced. We cannot be her. But we can be us. I can be me. You can be you.
Our everyday prayer - quiet, faithful, and unheralded prayers - are all that’s required to begin building virtue. The challenges God has given to each one of us individually are the very basis for building virtue, which is acquired by how we react to temptation, dryness, and trial.
St. Teresa never sought spiritual fireworks. She accepted them as they were given but she never confused them with the real work of spiritual development.
If we build virtue, we’ll do so by steady commitment to them in daily, small actions - praying when we don’t feel like it, being kind when we’re tired, doing our jobs well, treating our enemies fairly. These unheralded actions, undertaken not for any reward but purely from love of God and the desire to imitate his goodness, are where real spiritual work is accomplished. This is how we change our lives.
If we had to summarize the teaching of St. Teresa on building virtue, it would be that it’s accomplished primarily through humility, detachment, and love. When we make ourselves less, God’s goodness can fill us up. When we cease our selfish desires, we are set free to become the best version of ourselves. When we focus on how we can love God, then the everyday choices we make to please him become more and more natural.
This is how we who struggle so much to build virtue finally make some progress. By following the example of St. Teresa and committing to the steady cultivation of love, not desiring a quick spiritual fix but understanding that developing virtue is the work of a lifetime. When we choose to cultivate virtue even when we don’t feel like it, when there’s no external reward or recognition, when temptations and trials are swirling around, that’s precisely when virtue flourishes.
