II.    THEOLOGICAL VIRTUES

The theological virtues refer to three virtues pertaining to the nature of God in man, which clearly express mankind’s share of the divine. They enable the believer to establish firm closeness with the Divine. The theological virtues are supernatural gifts from God, and are freely bestowed on a believer for his or her sanctification and the glory of God. They are endowed on the faithful by virtue of baptism and the person's disposition to things pertaining to God. St. Paul in his letter to the Romans was the major proponent of the theological virtues; and he asserted that the greatest of all the theological virtues is 'LOVE’.

The three theological virtues are faith, hope, and love, which are discussed below.

 

Faith

According to the Penny Catechism, Faith is a supernatural gift of God that enables us to believe without doubting whatever God has revealed. The letter to the Hebrews describes faith as the substance of things not seen and the evidence of things hoped for. A person’s faith is their personal disposition to divine revelation and truth, and their acts of devotion to spiritual activities. A person’s journey of faith to becoming a soldier of Christ is begun at baptism, and nurtured by the Christian family, which is the Church, and the sacraments. Faith is that theological virtue by which we believe in God and all that he has said and revealed to us because God is truth itself, and include whatever the Holy Church proposes to us for our belief. The gift of faith remains in one who has not sinned against it. The disciple of Christ must not only keep the faith and live on it, but must also profess it and confidently bear witness to it and spread it.

 

Hope

The Penny Catechism defines hope as a supernatural gift of God by which we firmly believe that God will grant us eternal life and all the means necessary to attain it, if we follow his path to salvation, which he has richly poured out on his Church. The Church's teaching on hope is eschatological, that is, centred on the vision of heaven as the destination of the faithful. The faithful here is believed to be on a journey, because the Church is seen as being on a pilgrimage on earth, with the kingdom of God as the destination. Hence, the pilgrim Church on earth refers to the Church militant, suggesting the critical and important nature of the pilgrimage journey, and the prescribed attitude the faithful are to adopt and imbibe.

 

Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, and place our trust in Christ's promises, not relying on our own strength, but the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit. Hope keeps a man from discouragement, and sustains him or her during times of abandonment.

 

Love

Love is a supernatural gift from God, also known as charity. It is the theological virtue by which we love God above all things, for his own sake, and our neighbour as ourselves because of the love of God. The virtue of love is the core of all Christian virtues, such that it is the spirit behind all acts of piety and virtue. St. Paul speaking of the use of the spiritual gifts, identifies love as the greatest, and further admonished the people in his first letter to the Corinthians, that love should be the reason behind all of their actions. He further stressed that anyone who manifests the spiritual gifts, but has no love is like a clanging cymbal and a noisy gong. This follows from the teaching of Jesus Christ concerning the law, that the greatest commandment is the love of God and the love of man.

 

The virtue of love is so significant to human existence, because it is the main substance of the relationship between God and man, and an ideal substance of inter-personal relationships among people. This explains why love is not just a virtue expected of every faithful by God, as in the case of other virtues, but is indeed, a commandment.

The commandment to love is not a mere abstraction, but must be practical in the daily living of believers, because Jesus told the disciples in the Gospel of John, that it is only through love that the people of the world would know who are his own. He made charity the new commandment when he said: This is my commandment that you love one another as I loved you. The apostle Paul said that Love is patient and kind, not jealous or boastful, and is not arrogant or rude.