The Opposing Virtue Fighting Sin by Practicing the Good
Once we begin to recognize our predominant fault, the question naturally arises: how do we actually combat it? Recognition alone is not restoration. We may become very skilled at naming pride, vanity, impatience, or disordered appetite while continuing to repeat the same habits. The Catholic spiritual tradition does not counsel mere suppression of vice, nor does it leave us with a vague instruction to try harder. It teaches that, under the action of grace, a predominant fault is gradually weakened as we cooperate with the opposing virtue through concrete, repeated acts.
St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that repeated acts form lasting habits in us. Under grace, the good acts we choose repeatedly strengthen us in the practice of virtue and help reorder our desires toward the good. If pride repeatedly turns us inward, acts of humility train us to receive truth without defending the self at every turn. If appetite demands immediate satisfaction, acts of temperance strengthen the freedom to choose according to reason and love. If vanity seeks notice, hidden charity teaches the heart to act for God rather than applause.
This is not self-improvement by willpower alone. Grace comes first, sustains the good act, and brings it to fruit, but grace does not make our cooperation unnecessary. We are invited to respond. The saints show us how this looks in daily life: not usually through dramatic victories, but through small acts repeated faithfully and offered to God. The opposing virtue becomes concrete in the next conversation, the next irritation, the next opportunity to choose love over self-protection. Grace restores the soul through fidelity in the next good thing.
As you’re reading that, because it follows the old adage of knowledge is not causation, right? So simply because, and I think that we can all assent to this, we’re really, really, really good at naming our faults. Boy, do I know when I see it in you. Boy, do I know such a sin when I see it in you. To be able to engage with a person, to be able to come to that, I was saying, it is not to conquer it, right?
There was a sense of beast that is tameable. It’s mild within us and can be tamed through the process of virtue, too. That, you know, suppressing the vice is not enough, right? God doesn’t want us to just stop sinning. He wants us not just to stop the vice, but to positively express virtue.
express pride is remember, humility is not just, like, being self-denigrating. Being humble is truly knowing yourself. Without any pride, [Mary] could say, “My soul magnifies the Lord.” False humility is saying, “Oh, look at me,” right?
So pride/ humility, that friendship. Friendship. If you look at a beautiful cake, a wedding feast that a friend is inviting us to, and take all of it, right? To enjoy the meal that they are inviting us to, to taste the cake, to receive the, all of that.
Temperance. No, temperance. It’s again that suppressing of vice without suppressing virtue. And I love this one because it seems so odd to virtue. But it does. Rightly defined, it really does allow you to engage with the right humility.
Humility is not just self-knowledge. yes. And then you are this faith. Not about looking at me. What can I do for God? And it’s really, those are really powerful.
It’s important that when you are moving from that suppression of the vice to the expression of virtue, that must be a concrete, decisive action that you make. Right. So when you are, when you have kind of come into the knowledge of what vices might be, or where you’re tending to see the vast majority of faults, find something during that morning offering where you’re going to say, like if pride is your issue, just say, “My tongue, do that,” right? So I am not going to have a second portion today, right? Or if it’s vanity.
Knowledge only moves from the possession of information to the actual practice of virtue by the habit of action. Must do. It is always active. Must do. Passivity to action. That’s really, that’s important.