The Virtue of Prudence

Homily for Sunday, November 27, 2022
First Sunday in Advent
Romans 13:11–14

“You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep.”

A well-known conundrum sometimes posed to seminarians to help introduce them to moral theology goes something like this:

Mrs. Bergmeier is a married woman with several children and a husband who is ill.  She has been arrested by the Nazis for assisting her Jewish neighbors and is sentenced to six years without parole.  After months in the camp, she learns that her husband’s health is progressively declining due to his tending to the children, and that the children are not faring well due to their father’s ailing state.  She also learns something else: because of overcrowding, the camp releases pregnant women who are held for lesser crimes like hers.  Aware of one particular guard who regularly makes advances on her, Mrs. Bergmeier, for the sake of her family, submits to him.  Three months later a pregnant Mrs. Bergmeier returns to her family to care for her husband and children. (From “Proposing Cardinal Virtues,” by James Keenan, SJ, Theological Studies, 1995, p 709)

How to resolve Mrs. Bergmeier’s case?  For so-called “deontologists’” the answer is simple: because (as they see it) any act of sexual relations outside of marriage is always intrinsically wrong, what Mrs. Bergmeier did was wrong.  For others, so-called “proportionalists” (who are sometimes described as those who choose between the lesser of two evils) the case is not so straightforward.  “Was her action an extension of her marriage, or a contradiction of it?... Did Mrs. Bergmeier further compromise the reprobate guard by engaging him in illicit activity?... How would her present children understand the new child?  What would life be like for this new child born under such circumstances?”

However we might resolve it, the case of Mrs. Bergmeier can get us thinking about ethics, in particular the virtues, and especially the virtue of prudence.  Prudence is one of the four so-called “Cardinal virtues” (the others being justice, fortitude and temperance).  Aquinas defines prudence as “right reason applied to action” (II-II, 42, 2), and in teaching prudence my seminary professor described it as having three parts: 1) what to do, 2) how to do it, and 3) when to do it.  And so, for example, in the case of Mrs. Bergmeier, if one agreed that her reasoning was sound, she could be said to have exercised prudence in that 1) she decided what to do—to get out of prison and return to her family; 2) she decided how to do it—by submitting to the guard and getting pregnant; and 3) she decided when to do it—immediately.  Mrs. Bergmeier’s may be an extreme example, but she invites us, on this First Sunday of Advent, to consider prudence: to consider 1) what we do, 2) how we do it, and 3) when we do it.  

On a small scale we exercise the virtue of prudence every day.  We decide what to do: “I need to keep in touch with, say, my sister”; we decide how to do it: “I’m going to make a phone call”; and we decided when to do it: “I’m going to call this afternoon.”  And, of course, there will be mistakes in our exercise of prudence: sometimes we will choose the wrong course of action, or sometimes we will choose the right course of action but the wrong way of doing it, or sometimes we might choose the right course of action and the right way of doing it but then do it at the wrong time.  Prudence at its best—“right reason applied to action” at its best—is 1) choosing the right thing to do, 2) doing it in the right way, and then 3) doing it at the right time.

Today’s brief epistle lesson from Romans comes from a lengthier portion of Romans that could be said to be Paul’s primer on prudence.  The section begins in chapter 12 with Paul suggesting to us what to do:

I appeal to you… by the mercies of God, to present yourselves as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.  (Rom 12:1)

The bulk of chapter 12 is Paul then telling us how to “present yourselves as a living sacrifice,” for example:

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good…. Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; persevere in prayer…  Bless those who persecute you… Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep…  So far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. (from Rom 12:9–18)

Paul has told us 1) what to do and 2) how to do it, and in today’s reading, toward the end of this section, Paul tell us 3) when to do it: “Besides this,” Paul writes,

You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep…. The night is far gone; the day is near.  Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light…

“Now,” says today’s Collect, “in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility.”  In Romans we have been told 1) what to do—“present yourselves as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God”; we have been told 2) how to do it—“Let love be genuine; hate what is evil; hold fast to what is good…”—and in today’s reading Paul tells us 3) when to do it: “You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep…”

Since the early centuries of the church, this passage from Romans has been read on the First Sunday of Advent; and it is in the lectionary today, the first day of the Church year, for a reason: today, as we begin a new year, this passage invites us to consider our lives—what we are doing with our lives, and how are we living them?  To what extent, for example, might we be “letting the same mind be in us that was in Jesus Christ,” as Paul wrote in Philippians (Phil 2:5)?  Are we “loving one another with mutual affection and outdoing one another in showing honor,” as Paul wrote in Romans (Rom 12:10)?  To what extent are we in our lives “pressing on toward the goal, toward the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus,” to quote again from Philippians (Phil 2:14)?  Today’s passage from Romans invites us to consider what we are doing with our lives and how we are living them.  And this passage also tells us when we are live our lives this way: “Now is the moment,” writes Paul.  “The night is far gone; the day is near…  Now is the moment for you to wake from sleep.”

I invite us all, on this First Sunday of Advent, to be “prudent”: to consider what we wish to do with our lives, to consider how we might do it, and then to do it now.  Because who knows when will be our last day?  Do it now not only so that (as today’s Collect prays) “when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal,” but also because to live following the example of our Lord Jesus Christ is the most satisfying, rewarding, peace-filled and life-giving way to live now, in the time of this mortal life.

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