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Learning the Virtues: That Lead You to God

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This book, formerly titled The Virtues, is one of Guardini's best books. It is a list of his chosen virtues, with a chapter devoted to each. On looking at the virtues he chooses, one sees the essence of his writing. Some of them are: truthfulness, patience, justice, reverence, asceticism, courage, kindness, courtesy, silence, justice before God - they are the virtues of the interior man, the virtues drawn out of contemplation and knowledge of the true nature of the human being. They are also a statement on the times in which we live, where truthfulness, justice, reverence, courage, kindness, courtesy, and, most especially, silence are hard to come by. Guardini's gift is that he can penetrate the indoctrination, distractions and ultimately, the lying of our age and pierce through to the bedrock of our spirtuality, the nature of man, and man in relationship to God. His writings bring man back to what is essential, and strengthen him in trying to live by these precepts. One of Guardini's purposes in all that he did was to shore up the faith in an age that attacks it mercilessly, and in an age that tries to falsify the nature of man (in advertising, media, manipulation, etc.) This is a wonderful book. It is the holy stratosphere surrounding the throne of God. Highly recommended.

When I went to college 25 years ago I read the original book "The Virtues" as a required reading. After all this time I still remember the impact this book has had on me! It is the only textbook that I have remembered & cherished.I have bought copies to give to friends as gifts,and now that my children are teenagers,I will be giving them their own copies to keep.Guardini has a unique way of presenting the virtues.It is the best book on this subject !

Romano Guardini's books never disappoint, but I was a bit reluctant to start this one. Virtues, in my mind, were manly things, the word "virtue" being derived from the Latin word "vir", the genered male. Guardini's list of virtues -- patience, acceptance, disinterestedness, kindness, courtesy, unselfishness -- seemed too tame, too domesticated.

I was wrong. One comes to appreciate that Guardini's virtues are absolutely essential in this world that tries to distort human nature. These "quiet" virtues orient us toward our essence and allow us to appreciate the singularity of everyone else and everything in God's creation. They are an antidote to the noisiness, the emphasis of grand gestures, the resentments of modern living. They all point to ways to "take possession" of oneself under the umbrella of humility before the Divine.

A book to be read chapter at a time, followed by reflection.

Hello All:

As most people are aware, during its 2000 year history, the Roman Catholic Church has met and snycretized with many strains of non-Christian philosophy and non-Christian religion. The pre-Vatican II Church lied about this a great deal, but the post-Vatican II Church has been and is much more honest about it.

During this period of syncretization the Church used from the non-Christian religions what was compatible with the Church.

It is difficult to find honest Catholic works that address this issue in straightforward manner. However, this work of Guardini does do this, albeit obliquely.

For instance, if you, like me, have wondered about the similarities between the Greco-Roman-Teutonic conceptions of Fate and Destiny and the Church's idea of Providence, you can discern the answer to this in Guardini's book. I would say that Guardini's idea of Destiny is the central unifying theme of the whole book. As one specific example, in his chapter entitled "Acceptance," Guardini states:

[Begin Quote]
The beginning of all effort is the recognition of what is, even if that happens to be one's faults. Only when I honestly take upon myself the burden of my faults do I really become serious, and only then can the work of overcoming them begin...

We must also accept the situation and the circumstances of our life as they have been allotted to us. Of course, we can change and improve many things and shape them more according to our whishes, especially if these wishes are definite and the hand that seeks to carry them out is firm. But, basically, the tendencies that have grown out of the earliest years remain and determine what follows....

Another step is the acceptance of our destiny. Destiny is not accident. It possesses a logical consistency which is determined externally by the connection of events by but also internally by the nature and the character of the person involved. ....

...So the nature of a person forms, as it were, a\ sieve which permits certain experience to pass through and retains others. ...

To accept one`s destiny really means to accept oneself and to be true to oneself. This idea took the form of amor fati in pagan skepticism, the "love" of one's own fate, born of defiance. Its Christian form is the assent given to the way that is outlined for us by our nature, because of our confidence that everything rests upon Divine Providence.
R. Guardini, Living the Virtues pp. 29-30.
[End Quote]

There is, of course, much, much more on this.

So, how to get there? This is not a theoretical book. Guardini prescribes the virtues of "silence" (virtually identical with the Buddhist idea of quieting the mind), "unselfishness" (not at all what you might think, but instead virtually in identity with the Zen idea of no-selfness, except that in this Christian version the "true self" emerges when we give up the "false self"; "disinterestedness" (which has many similarities with the detachment of the yoga of action); "patience," etc. There is a chapter on each of the foregoing in the book.

In short, this is an excellent book, especially for others coming to Roman Catholicism from other religious traditions (e.g., academia, neo-Paganism, or Buddhism).

Lastly, Guardini wastes no ink whatsoever on the non-issues of abortion and sexual "sin" which seem to consume so much time of the uneducated these days.

You can use this book as a guide for living.