Well, you survived your first day – well done and welcome back!

Yesterday, I told you that your purpose in coming to school is to learn virtue.  But if that’s what this is about, why all the book learning?  Why not just spend all day giving meals to the hungry and visiting the elderly?  What do phonograms, and the periodic table, and American history, and quadratic equations and all the rest have to do with living a virtuous life?

Well, for one thing, God gave us minds by creating us in His image, and to use our minds to know the truth about His creation is virtuous in and of itself.  Proverbs says that “the heart of him who has understanding seeks knowledge, but the mouths of fools feed on folly.”  Knowing is part of what we’re made for in the first place and is the mark of a virtuous heart.

For another thing, knowing requires virtue of us, because learning takes fortitude to tackle new and difficult subjects; justice to accept the grade we’ve earned; prudence to approach our studies in a responsible way.  And it also requires us to want to know the truth—otherwise, why study at all?  In other words, the process of knowing—also called learning—makes us more virtuous people. 

And knowing also gives us the capacity for virtue.  Proverbs 19:2 says that “Desire without knowledge is not good, and whoever makes haste with his feet misses his way.”  We may desire to do the right thing, but if you don’t know anything, it will end up badly.  A doctor who never studied biology will harm his patients rather than help them; an engineer who never bothered to acquire the necessary knowledge will build a bridge that eventually collapses.  There is no virtue in ignorance.

In Romans, the apostle Paul writes that we should be transformed by the renewing of our minds.  To be sure, virtue begins with the heart…but it takes knowledge to live it out.

Have a wonderful day.