Catechism of the Catholic Church defines a virtue as “an habitual and firm disposition to do the good.
among the virtues we may distinguish those which perfect the intellect (the intellectual virtues) and those which perfect the will (the moral virtues).
virtues which are built up by human efforts (the acquired virtues) and those which are given directly by God (the infused virtues).
the acquired virtues point only to the natural end of man, whereas the infused virtues are supernatural
the theological virtues. These “relate directly to God.
They dispose Christians to live in a relationship with the Holy Trinity.
The theological virtues – faith, hope, and charity – come from God, are infused in the human soul, and lead man back to God as his supernatural and ultimate end.
faith perfects the intellect, hope and charity perfect the will.
Even those infused and theological virtues which could not be acquired by human effort but can only be gained through the divine gift, once they are infused in the soul, are capable of being acted upon by the choice of man
here we see the precise difference between the virtues and the gifts. While the gifts are also stable realities in the soul which, like the infused virtues, are given directly by God, it is yet not possible for man to make an act of the gifts of the Holy Spirit of his own volition. We cannot make acts from the gifts
The gifts are stable realities in the soul, and they do perfect either the intellect (wisdom, knowledge, understanding, counsel) or the will (piety, fortitude, fear of the Lord).
acts proceed from the gifts only upon the special movement of the Holy Spirit – not from the choice of man
By the gifts of the Holy Spirit, man is able to act according to a new divine mode. By the theological virtues, he tends toward God as his supernatural end, but still according to a human mode. By the gifts, he is now moved by the Holy Spirit in a divine mode of acting.
the beatitudes are acts which proceed either from the virtues or from the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, “a man is moved towards, and approaches the happy end by works of virtue, and above all by the works of the gifts, if we speak of eternal happiness, for which our reason is not sufficient, since we need to be moved by the Holy Ghost, and to be perfected with his gifts that we may obey and follow him. Consequently the beatitudes differ from the virtues and gifts, not as habit, but as act from habit.
beatitude can first be considered as an act of the virtue of humility: “The first beatitude may refer either to a contempt of riches, or to the contempt of honors, which results from humility.
poverty of Spirit comes from the gift of fear of the Lord
the gift of fear of the Lord allows a man to be free from attachment to worldly pleasures and delights.
we must rightly conclude that poverty of Spirit corresponds primarily to the gift of fear of the Lord
if a man fear God perfectly, he does not, by pride, seek greatness either in himself or in external goods, viz. honors and riches.
Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on help of the grace of the Holy Spirit.
by the virtue of hope, our will is moved to desire God as our happiness and last end.
the gift of fear of the Lord drives us away from sin and toward our loving Savior.
by the gift of holy fear, the Holy Spirit moves us in a divine mode to fear the loss of our only good and our supreme hope, God himself.
