SJ9 - A Brief Reflection on Prudence - St. Joseph and His World with Mike Aquilina

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Episode 9 – A Brief Reflection on Prudence

In this final episode, Mike Aquilina and Kris McGregor discuss St. Joseph and the virtue of prudence

An excerpt from St. Joseph and His World:

The prudent way—the way of St. Joseph—begins with self-knowledge. People cannot see reality clearly as long as they have those planks in their eyes. They cannot have radical openness to reality if they harbor fears of the truth.

In his discussion of prudence, Pieper warns of something called falsification of memory. He sees this as the great destroyer of the sense of reality. People tend to mythologize their days. They make themselves out to be heroes. They make their adversaries and rivals out to be villains, just because they want the same things. It is hard not to see life in this way. But there is no doubt that it is a falsification of memory—and it is corrosive to our sense of reality.

The Christian tradition offers remedies for this. A good spiritual director will not permit his charges to hold on to this kind of thought. He will humanize the rivals they demonize.

Anyone can cultivate that attitude, too, by means of a daily examination of conscience and regular confession. Reality is something that must be faced squarely, deliberately, consciously, with the means God has provided—first, the inner reality of one’s self and then the reality of the world.

Joseph can be misunderstood, as prudence is misunderstood. His silence can be mistaken for passivity, but it is not.

Joseph is the prudent man whose thoughts correspond to reality, and whose actions flow from those thoughts. He is the image of God and yet a model for every Christian. He is the one who keeps the constant company of Jesus Christ.

Aqualina, Mike. St. Joseph and His World (pp. 75-76). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.

For more episodes in this series visit – St. Joseph and His World with Mike Aquilina page

You can find the book on which this series is based here.

Mike Aquilina is a popular author working in the area of Church history, especially patristics, the study of the early Church Fathers.^[1] He is the executive vice-president and trustee of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, a Roman Catholic research center based in Steubenville, Ohio. He is a contributing editor of Angelus (magazine) and general editor of the Reclaiming Catholic History Series from Ave Maria Press. He is the author or editor of more than fifty books, including The Fathers of the Church (2006); The Mass of the Early Christians (2007); Living the Mysteries (2003); and What Catholics Believe(1999). He has hosted eleven television series on the Eternal Word Television Network and is a frequent guest commentator on Catholic radio.