Magnanimity: Living Out Our Hope

In this week the Frank Friar writes our reflection, Didi Fraser reviews Fr Donald Calloways book on consecration to St Joseph and I write on the Sign of the Cross. Welcome to your Coracle!

I keep a list of countries in my mind I desire to visit before I die.  If your reading this, you should not be surprised that Scotland is on that list.  Why? Storytelling.  The Gaelic imagination coupled with an ability to weave a tale is something I find quite extraordinary from the Scottish.  Stories are not a mere form of entertainment they are a means of conveying an identity, understanding, and the possibilities of oneself and a people.  In that cultivation of identity, they help us to answer who we are meant to be as humans.  Thus, for a story to take root in the human heart the storyteller must be one that has imbibed the principles of the story they tell.  Remember, authenticity opens the human heart to receive a message from another.  What are one of those messages we need to have renewed in our hearts during our current times?  Hope!  Hope not in an abstract and ethereal sense but in a concrete way that enlivens our day to day life.  A key virtue that makes that day to day hope recognizable and livable is the virtue of magnanimity. 

The Higher Way

In our modern cinema or literature this virtue does not seem to come up as a character trait with any frequency.  Why?  I think it has to do with the demand it makes on living one’s life.  What does it demand?  Let us first look at the structure of the word.  Magnanimity comes from two Latin words ‘Magnus’ and ‘Animus’.  Hence, a literal meaning of magnanimity is a “great soul.”  What does it mean then to have a great soul?   To shape our understanding of this, we now must turn toward the word great.  This virtue speaks to a keen aspect of our human nature that has been cast aside in our modern times.  Humans are not called to meagerness but to greatness.  Humans are filled with potentiality of realization that is absent in the other animals, because we have a self-awareness they do not possess.  We can act toward the lower extent of what are nature is meant to be, casting us lower than the other beasts, but the opposite is true also.  We can act in full accord with our nature making it possible to shine forth with its nobility.  The virtue of magnanimity is the virtue that guides the person in choosing the higher way; ways that are noble, honorable and generous. 

…More Will Be Given

Being that humans have the possibility to either live to the fullest or least amount of their nature how are they to do the former?  It is in Jesus Christ that the truest and fullest way of generosity and honorableness is made known to the human person.  He not only models for us the virtue of magnanimity but he makes it possible for us by imparting unto us his life.  A key passage in understanding this call to magnanimity is Matthew 13:12.   It reads “For to the one who has more, more will be given, and he will have an abundance.  As for the one who does not have, even what little they have will be taken away.”  This is a verse that makes people cringe when they hear it, because on the surface it appears cruel, yet to the magnanimous its depth is clear.  This verse is found within the passage about the parable of the sower.  It is in this passage we see the sower letting his seed fall generously on many different forms of earth.  The sower is generous in the spreading of his seeds.  The Christian is a person who has received that generosity of seed and is thus called to go forth to spread with abundance what it is the seed has produced in their lives.  Just as the sower, Jesus Christ, uses both hands to spread the seeds of his Father, his disciples are called to do likewise.  Accordingly, the more a disciple strives to be like Jesus in the spreading of the seed, the more they shall receive from him.  To be generous with both hands is what it means for a Christian to be magnanimous.

Closing

Where is hope found in this virtue?  The magnanimity of God is to be found in his promises.  It is in his promises that hope is given over to us by Him.  Hope is the gift that gives us a confident desire that God will fulfill what it is he has promised to and for us.  The living out of this hope is realized in the virtue of magnanimity.  God has fulfilled his promises in Jesus Christ, and we are waiting for the consummation of those promises in Christ’s second coming.  Until, that day we live now in the patient and kind mercy of God which manifests his generosity for us.  Through magnanimity the Christian person and people help to extend that hopeful and ‘hope filled’ generosity out into the world by living lives permeated and shaped by Christ.  Lives that seek out higher and nobler ways, not out of pride, but out of the desire to give glory to God by making him known to others.  Magnanimity helps the roots of hope to grow deeper into the soil that is the human heart. 

“We must have great confidence for it is most important that we should not cramp our good desires but should believe that, with God’s help, if we make continual efforts to do so, we shall attain, though perhaps not at once, to that which many saints have reached through His favor.” ~ St. Teresa of Avila

Fr Nicholas Blackwell is a Carmelite Friar and Priest based in New York State. Go to www.thefrankfriar.com to read and listen to more of his insights. He is also one of the speakers at The Highland Gathering - The North of Scotlands free online men’s conference on the 19th September.

Weekly Catechesis: Fr James and Fr Max from St Mary’s Beauly have begun a weekly series exploring the teachings of the Catholic Church linked to the previous Sunday’s readings.

Consecration to St Joseph: Didi Fraser reviews Fr Donald Calloways book on St Joseph which is a 33 day consecration to this important and timely Saint.

The Sign of the Cross: What is the Sign of the Cross and why do we do this? I write on a practice that we all do as Catholics but might not realise its fullest meanings.

The Transfiguration: The glory of Jesus glimpsed but for a moment, and yet present always. From an article on Aleteia written a couple of years ago.

The Immaculate Heart of Mary: The Church has given each month a special siginficance. August is for the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

St Gregory Nazianzus

God always was, and always is, and always will be. Or rather, God always Is. For Was and Will be are fragments of our time, and of changeable nature, but He is Eternal Being. And this is the Name that He gives to Himself when giving the Oracle to Moses in the Mount. For in Himself He sums up and contains all Being, having neither beginning in the past nor end in the future; like some great Sea of Being, limitless and unbounded, transcending all conception of time and nature, only adumbrated [intimated] by the mind, and that very dimly and scantily.

God bless and have a great week.