September 25, 2020 

Dear friends in Christ,

With everything going on in our world in the past few months, the challenge of covid, unemployment, egregious incidents of racism, natural disasters, riots in our streets, degradation in our politics and the stresses facing our families, it occurred to me, that in the face of all this we need to cultivate virtue, in ourselves, in our families, and in our communities.  Virtue comes from the Latin word virtus and connotes strength and character.  Certainly, to face all these things well, we need strength and character.   Another way to define virtue, is that it is the habit of doing the good.  We need and indeed our whole society needs this kind of strength so that we can build one another up and not tear one another down.

The Dominican Sisters of St. Cecelia have developed a wonderful three-year curriculum encouraging virtues.  Over the next three years, we are going to be adapting it and integrating it into our faith formation programs across all ages so that we can all learn together.  Hopefully, through this process we will be able to grow in virtue and goodness. The world needs us to be kind of lamp that shines this kind of goodness, Christ’s goodness and love upon our world.

It is helpful to understand that there are different kinds of virtues. There are theological virtues: FAITH, HOPE, and CHARITY which are given to us by God at baptism. These give life to the moral virtues by allowing God to dwell within us and by drawing us to be virtuous out of love for Him.  They lead us directly to God.

There are human/moral virtues which are acquired by education, deliberate acts, and persevering effort. They are purified and elevated by grace.  Four of these virtues place a pivotal role and so are called the cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.  They lead us to God through other things that are good for us. 

There are also seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord) which are poured out by the Holy Spirit in the sacrament of Confirmation.  These gifts are different from the virtues because they are given directly by God rather than acquired by repeated good actions.  The gifts of the Holy Spirit complete and perfect all the virtues by making us docile to the promptings of the Holy Spirit.  (from definitions in Faith in Practice)

We begin in October with the virtue of Faith.  Once a month, I will devote one of these columns to the virtue of the month and we will be sending home other virtual and print resources to help us grow together.   This year we will cultivate the virtues of faith, reverence, stewardship, generosity, gratitude, honesty, mercy, justice, and zeal.   Let us pray that the Holy Spirt may help us to grow in virtue and holiness throughout this year.  You can register your household here to be included in this year's program.

One more important thing…. Parents, did you know that that we now have a new confirmation age for the Archdiocese of Seattle.  It is now 7^th Grade. This was done so that we could make sure that confirmation does not get mixed up with the busyness of high school and so that confirmation was more understood as an unearned gift.   So please know that all youth, 7^th Grade through high school are now eligible to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation.  If you have any children 7^th grade and up who have not received the sacrament, they should enroll now in our confirmation preparation program.  Especially any of your teens in high school should get confirmed this year.  Please sign up online today:  Here.  Sessions begin October 11^th!

Blessings on your week!

Fr. Johnson