The Virtue That Takes Virtue to the Next Level

Fr. Mike introduces us to the virtue that makes other virtues
excellent: magnanimity. If someone asked you what the most
essential virtues are, you might say humility, faith, hope, or
love. But have you ever heard of the virtue of magnanimity? What
this virtue does is it magnifies—or makes greater—other virtues
within someone. In other words, it’s to strive for excellence. This
is not to be confused with the vice of pride, which relies on the
gifts of oneself without acknowledging any help that may come from
another person or even God. Instead, a magnanimous person sees the
gifts God has given them and chooses to emphasize them in their
life as a way to honor him. Consequently, every saint must be
magnanimous; they must be great for the Lord. Even saints who have
the most different and opposite lifestyles become one in the same,
purely through their desire to be excellent, not for the sake of
themselves, but as a “thank you” to the Lord. One way to strive for
magnanimity is to avoid the temptation to it’s opposing vice, which
is pusillanimity. Pusillanimity is the direct opposite of
magnanimity: it’s to shy away from the gifts God has given you, out
of timidity. This is different from humility, because where
humility is acknowledging that your gifts are not your own,
pusillanimity is refraining from using those gifts in the first
place. By embracing the gifts God has given us and using them to
glorify him, we are being magnanimous. It doesn’t matter what stage
of life you’re in, how old you are, or what your gifts consist of.
All of us have the opportunity to be magnanimous, and all of us
have the opportunity to be saints.