From the Pastor - May 2019

If you know anything about the Medici family, you probably know they supported the arts during the Italian Renaissance.  Artists such as Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci enjoyed the patronage of the Medici family.  The Medicis also commissioned Piero del Pollaiuolo and Sandro Botticelli to paint The Seven Virtues, seen in the picture. 

The seven life-size panels decorated the Mercatanzia high courtroom in Florence, a place where trade disputes and financial matters were settled.  The beautiful enthroned women personify faith, hope, and love (theological virtues) and courage, prudence, temperance, and justice (cardinal virtues). 

The size and placement of the panels indicate the importance of virtue in such “worldly” economic matters as commerce and banking.  The figures in The Seven Virtues are wearing clothes that were typical for noble women in fifteenth-century Florence.  It is the artists’ way of declaring the importance of virtue in that specific context. 

Likewise, we need virtues in our context.  By practicing them in our daily lives, the virtues become “second-nature,” part of who we are.  Just as athletes and musicians practice regularly to be at their best for a game or performance, we must practice Christian virtues consistently so that we are at our best as Christians. 

When we face moral decisions, such as confronting a dishonest co-worker or making an end-of-life decision, we may have access to many resources that can supply information to us.  However, what is crucial is knowing how to make use of that information in a morally responsible way.  What we need to know is what a good person would think of our choices. 

As Robin Lovin says: “When you think about the kind of person you want to be when everybody else is pulling you in different directions, you are rehearsing themes of virtue that go all the way back to Augustine and Aristotle.”¹ 

Typically, we learn virtues from our relationship with other people.  By their example, parents, teachers, friends, and mentors teach us the virtues that sustain those relationships. 

The question: “What Jesus do?” also comes to mind.  As Paul says in Ephesians 4:13: “God’s goal is for us to become mature adults—to be fully grown, measured by the standard of the fullness of Christ.”

What kind of person do you want to be?  Practice what it takes to be that kind of person over and over.  As virtues become second nature to us, we grow into the fullness of Christ.  With God’s help, we become a truly magnificent work of art.

~Brian

_______________

¹ Robin W. Lovin, An Introduction to Christian Ethics: Goals, Duties, Virtues (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2011), 210.