Word of the Week

Twenty Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Temperance: Temperantia (L.): Meaning, "to modify; balance”
Temperanceis the cardinal moral virtue that moderates the attraction of pleasure and provides balance in the use of created goods (CCC 1809). The temperate person ensures the mastery of the will over instinct and keeps natural earthly desires at bay with the use of a healthy discretion. Temperance is closely linked with the call to be vigilant (CCC 1809).

Discovering the meaning of temperance in the bible is elusive. The general notion of sobriety of Spirit can be found in a few places in the Old Testament, most notably in the Book of Sirach where God reminds the faithful follower to overcome their base desires; their concupiscence (Sir.5:2, 37:27-31, 18:30). As the New Testament offers a few places of vigilance (cf. WOW on vigilance), the only location of temperance can be found in Paul’s first letter to Corinth. He employs the term temperavit: “Thus God has established harmony in the body…all the different parts of it were to make each others welfare their common care” (1 Cor.12.24). Closely connected to its Greek kin, sophrosyne, meaning, “directing reason”, temperance has as its primary meaning in the disposition of all parts to the ordered whole (Pieper, 146).  Recall the words of Christ, “be perfect like my father in heaven in perfect” (Mt.5:48). The Greek rendering that can also be applied here is ‘be whole like my father is whole’. Our call to be perfect is a call to be whole, confronting our sense appetite with the grace of God and directing our entire being to God.

Temperance tames man’s appetite, aiding the will to shun all that is ostentatious. In this manner of speaking, temperance is the cardinal virtue to humility. Joseph Pieper remarks in The Four Cardinal Virtues that St. Thomas Aquinas calls temperance“the virtue that is otherwise known as serenity of the Spirit” (Pieper, 147). Pieper reaches into an additional meaning of temperance as he highlights how this moral virtue calls out man to look squarely at his condition before God (Pieper, 147), a call which is a lesson in self-offering.

In this Twenty-Second week in Ordinary Time, the Lord exhorts us to re-examine the language of love, the language of offering up everything for the sake of Christ. In light of this cardinal virtue, Christ can be discovered anew. Temperance equips man with the necessary vision to abstain from the agenda of the world, and to consequently be renewed in mind and spirit to progress in the will of the Father (Rom.12:1-2). In and through temperance, holiness is achieved by submitting all passions to the one Passion of Christ.

“Temperance…is the saving and defending realization of the inner order of man.”

--Joseph Pieper

Primary Texts Consulted

•  Catholic Bible. Suggested trans. Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition.
•  Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd Edition, 1997.
Pieper, Joseph. Cardinal Virtues. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966.

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