Father Chad Ripperger has been one of the most influential priests in my life via his amazing set of talks and some personal input. He is the reason I am in the third order which he started. His intellect and spiritual insights are gifts from God.
One of the things he has pointed out is something I have written on this blog-the sin of curiosity.
This sin causes people to run after approved and unapproved apparitions. We do not need to concern ourselves with visions, but we do need to study our faith.
Recently, Father noted that curiosity is a vice, even when it is connected to wanting to know the latest about certain apparitions, even approved ones.
The virtue which is the opposite of this vice is studiosity, the virtue connected to temperance, which is a search for the truth which is disciplined and ordered.
We are responsible for knowing the Faith, and we are also responsible for dulling our own intellects.
Raissa, as I noted, cried out in her diary for people to know their religion, the Catholic religion.
Without knowledge of the Faith, one easily falls into many other vices, and we are responsible for that type of falling away.
Studiosity is a virtue. If one is an adult and never studies the Faith in the Catechism or the encyclicals, or other excellent books, one is committing two sins at least. One is sloth and the other is neglect of conscience.
Ask yourselves honestly in your examination of conscience whether you are studying. If one merely chooses one author, such as St. Alphonsus, or the Pope Emeritus, or St. Augustine, or St. Therese of Liseiux, one is doing one's duty.
But the virtue demands that we study not only spirituality and prayer, but doctrine and dogma.
Studiosity is connected to the great virtue of temperance, the virtue which strengthens our reason. Temperance prepares us to combat temptation. Studiosity allows us to know the Faith so that we can avoid temptations and prepare for holiness.
Are you studying anything solid with regard to the Faith?
For those caught up with seers and visions, even approved ones, I challenge you to set those books aside and begin to study your Faith.
We are required to do this, and the fact that there is a virtue which helps us do so should be comforting.
Thomas Aquinas makes this distinction between curiosity, which actually is connected to lust and greed, and studying. Curiosity connects us with the senses, not the intellect. Whereas studying increases our knowledge in order to help us know God and ourselves.
To be constantly distracted by trivia may be an indication that one has fallen into the vice of curiosity.
to be continued...
