In the age of computers, drone shipping, AI, and all that, the very idea of virtue is becoming hard to understand, and the process of development distasteful.  One of the reasons is our aversion to the natural pace of growth.  Whether we know it or not, we are conditioned to value speed and efficiency, and don’t really have the intuitive ability to question it.  I mean, who could ever possibly say that a download is better if it takes longer?  But there are some things that just do take a while, and the moment you try to make it faster you lose it.  In those cases, the “not yet” of fulfillment is not a deficiency (like a slow download), but a necessary – even enjoyable! – part of it all.  “Streamlining” it with some hack is just that, a hack job.  And, when it is streamlined, it never really becomes part of you in the sense of tradition or power (i.e. a virtue)

For example, I really want to be able to cook well from a spirit of tradition – I want the virtue of cooking goodness – and I believe my butcher friend/neighbor that this is a deficit in me, a lack of the development of something truly human.  (He doesn’t say I’m deficient in some derogatory way, but it is manifest in his sincere smile at my effort – like a child.)  There’s nothing wrong with recipes of course, but a good cook is one who knows how to feast and enjoy through sense, tradition, and all that.  He doesn’t just follow a formula but knows what is good.  Goodness is in his senses, and he can sense what is good.

Josef Pieper says that virtue is only kind of like “self-mastery,” and that the much better word for virtue is “spontaneity,” not like YOLO randomness, which is usually a form a of despair, but the freedom and ability in the moment to pursue and reach what is good – food included.

Because I don’t have this virtue, I borrow my wife’s tablet (gasp!) and look up a recipe.  I measure out the pieces and follow the instructions, once I scroll past no less than 100 ads and pictures of the dang thing, not to mention ignoring the auto-play video going in the corner.  I can’t quite recall, but I think I told the kids to shut their noise up as I googled the measurement for some ingredient that I was having to translate from tablespoons to cups because I couldn’t find the tablespoon thing needed to triple the recipe anyway for all these dang kids.  Without the spontaneity of the virtue of good-cookery, and without even the lesser form of self-discipline that might have this recipe stored in a little box like my Granny, I am now enslaved to what might be the vice of laziness that will just do it again the next time my wife is sick and I’m doing all the cooking.  And, why can’t I remember if this cut is good for rare roast beef or long and slow tenderness?  Because I don’t need to know it if I can google it whenever I need.  I do not need that virtue because its fulfillment can be downloaded anytime.

Growing the virtue is different.  When I talk to my friend with the virtue, he gives some simple instruction for me.  I ask if an onion would be good in it.  “Oh!  I bet that would be tasty,” he says.  (He says “tasty” a lot.)  In this exchange I learn something in a different way, experience the spontaneity of idea (onion = probably good idea) and gain a little.  The process of that growth in virtue ought not be missed, because it’s part of it.

(I understand there are strands of Catholics out there that thinking cooking only belongs to women.  This is sheer ignorance of our history likely mixed with an even greater ignorance of Catholic thought and practice.)

By definition, virtue is only possible in a being that develops innocently over time.  I say “innocent” because although Aquinas calls youth a “deficiency” of maturity, it doesn’t make it evil.  It’s just “not yet,” as in hopefulness.  Youth is a hopeful deficiency, because you can trust that growth is happening (food really helps), and the expectation meets with enjoyment along the way.  That hopefulness has joy with it as it learns, and I am learning to hope for better food.

To think of faith, virtue, and life in God (and food) in technological terms likely reduces it to making sure you’re not in mortal sin when you die, trying to get the formula right so you’re on the right spiritual team, and really missing the goodness of life along the way.  That goodness we’re meant to enjoy along the way is a foretaste of heaven that draws us to the ultimate good, and good food has a way of drawing us forward.  And, when we can habitualize that goodness it becomes real Catholic culture.  The virtue around food seems to have good taste to it because it makes much of life taste good – the process of cooking itself, the shared meals with others, and so on.  Having “bad taste” in food might not taste bad, like the way fast food tastes “good,” but it isn’t the virtue that seems possible and available to us.  The more efficient it is, in other words, the less likely there is virtue in it (meaning less humanity) and the less we really enjoy the goodness of it along the way.

When I see it this way I am less agitated, less insecure, in the slow development of virtue (cookery included).  It helps me see the forward-drawing power of growth and acknowledge that my loving Father is not a distant reward for not-sinning, but a present love that, like a dad watching a baby learn to walk, delights the entire time.  If we keep trying to download goodness in the latest meme-fad-of-faith, we’re rushing things along and forgetting how close heaven is to us now along the way.

Heaven fades away before our eyes,

Heaven fades within our hearts,

Because in thought our heaven and earth

Are cast too far apart.  (From Fr. Faber’s poem Sunday).