I should pray more.  And I definitely need to be a better person.

Since I am now a Catholic, I believe there is an important relationship between prayer and becoming a better person.  But as a Catholic, I don’t believe that becoming a better person is something that God will do in me without me.  I need to do my part.  My part is made possible by God’s grace, but the operations of God’s grace are not contrary to my free will, nor do they preclude my own efforts.  Grace, as Thomas Aquinas was fond of saying, does not violate nature but perfects it.

So I need to pray and work on developing the virtues.  They’re not mutually exclusive; they’re mutually inclusive.  You pray for more virtue. And if and when you feel a little of the freedom that comes with having developed the virtue, you turn your eyes to heaven like you were turning to address the doctor who just put your dislocated shoulder back into its socket, and you say, “Thank you, God.  That’s much better now.”

On the Catholic understanding of grace, it would be a mistake to imagine that I do something truly charitable, truly good, apart from God’s grace, such that I can turn to God and say, “See how good I am!  I did that!  You should show me some respect!”  This would be like a child who asks for money from his father to buy him a Father’s Day gift – then asking him for privileges because he bought his father a gift.  Everything we have we got from God.  What God wants in return is that we love our blessed, saintly mother and get along with our brothers and sisters.

And yet it would also be a mistake to imagine that we can depend on piety alone without virtue.  If you’re an alcoholic, you can’t say, “Well, I do the rosary every day, so I don’t need to go to AA meetings.”  That would be a big mistake.  People in AA know that their sobriety depends on a “higher power.” But they also know that they must do the work and go to meetings.  It’s not an either-or; it’s a both-and.

So too, it would be a mistake to imagine, “I have a deep devotion to Mary; I visit her shrine all the time; so I don’t need to work on my marriage.”  I am repeatedly saddened and confused when I see pious, devoted Catholics simply dump their spouse, saying little more than, “That just wasn’t working out,” or, “I wasn’t fulfilled in that relationship,” much the way any non-Catholic or non-Christian would.  Piety is no substitute for virtue.  Saying the rosary is great, but it makes no sense to say it and then abuse your employees or support abortion.  It’s like saying, “I love my mother” and then kicking her down the stairs.

It is classic among evangelicals to find someone who says he has “devoted his life to Jesus,” and who believes he has, but is still getting drunk and cheating on his wife. Just because a person has “given his life to Jesus” one day in an altar call doesn’t necessarily mean that all the temptations will miraculously go away or that now he will suddenly be caring and responsible in a way he never was before.

Faith is not magic. It’s not a magic wand that touches you and, in an instant, turns you, a frog, into a prince.  God’s grace works in God’s own time.  He rescues the Jewish people from their slavery in Egypt, but it’s forty years before they get to enter the Promised Land. In the meantime, they must work and sacrifice and prepare themselves.  They must worship at the Tabernacle in the desert and fight their enemies.  It required years of struggle. But God was there every step of the way.

St. Augustine would not have become the great preacher and bishop he became had he not trained endlessly to develop the skills of rhetoric.  And St. Thomas would not have written the Summa had he not spent countless hours in study.

Some say: “Pray as though everything depended on God, and act as though everything depended on you.” I prefer to say that we should act knowing that, if we want to be better, God is already working in us, and pray knowing that God will not work in us without us.

If you want God’s help and God’s grace, He will give it to you.  But it won’t necessarily transform you overnight.  Not that this doesn’t ever happen, but don’t lose hope if it doesn’t.  We must walk by faith and not by sight, the way Abraham did when he set out for God knows where, and the way Mary did when the angel told her something beyond understanding.

If we do our work each day and pray constantly, God will help us develop the virtues.  But if you don’t do the work of developing the virtues, don’t expect God to rescue you miraculously when the time comes.

If you smoke two packs of cigarettes a day, God might save you from disease, but remember, “you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”  You cannot say: “God, I’m now going to do something utterly self-destructive, and later I will depend upon you to rescue me.”  Or, “I won’t discipline myself to develop the virtues of prudence, temperance, courage, or justice; I won’t discipline myself to be other than my spoiled, arrogant, greedy, and spiteful self; I will do everything contrary to God’s wisdom and guidance; and yet I still want God to make me flourish.”  You can’t get heavenly happiness if you’re living a hellish life.

God can turn water into wine, but He can’t make creatures designed for selfless love flourish if they say no to being transformed by that love.

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You may also enjoy:

Charles Péguy Guide to Virtues and Worlds

James H. Toner The Eighth Deadly Sin