On the Virtue of Sweetness

I've often said that, despite my insistence on the importance of knowing our Catholic faith for the purposes of educating others and incorporating Catholic teaching into our own lives, the greatest Catholics I've ever know - and you will see them in almost every parish - are the sweet, devout elderly women who are daily communicants and pray the Rosary daily. Their love for the Blessed Mother is surpassed only by their love of the Triune God, including the Real Presence in the Eucharist. Their every action speaks of true charity in that those actions are founded upon and directed toward a love of God above all things and for His own sake. Their knowledge of theology may not be vast, but their faith and devotion is virtually unparalleled; and I thank God every day for their presence.

I posted a comment on a blog a few years back and mentioned this point, and received an almost immediate response from a woman who took offense to my post. She said she was one of the elderly women I described, and that she was neither sweet nor given to mere sentimental devotion. Not in a mood to pull to punches that day, I proceeded to tell her that she was mistaken in her assumption that she was among the women I had described. With the help of a few other well-informed Catholics on the board I also explained to this woman the difference between "mere sentimental devotion" and devotion borne out of a deep and abiding faith (those who practice the latter possess an abiding inner strength that is generally lacking in those whose devotion is based primarily on sentiment). We then engaged in a lengthy discussion about the meaning of the word sweetness and how it related to our Catholic faith.

We begin the conclusion of the Salve Regina with the invocation: "O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary..." As Catholics, we recognize sweetness as a part of the character of the Blessed Mother. She was, among other things, a person of good humor and kindly disposition. This is not a coincidental part of her nature. Let us remember that she was free from sin, and that what we know of her and of her divine Son gives us an insight into the nature of man prior to the Fall.

It is easy to confuse sweetness with other character traits, especially in a day and age where man's knowledge of his own nature has become so horribly distorted by secular humanism and the various other isms that seek to direct man's focus away from God and toward fleeting things. As was the case with the woman above, there are those who identify sweetness with being ignorant or naive about the ways of the world, as though man must necessarily be emotionally scarred by the knowledge he acquires. I trust we have all met living examples of people who have put this stereotype to rest, be they parents, priests, teachers, or other mentors in our lives who were both knowledgeable and of a sweet disposition. Indeed, if they're anything like the mentors I've known, their knowledge and experience helped them grow in sweetness, rather than the reverse.

Another common misconception regarding sweetness is the notion that someone with a sweet nature can never behave in a way that others may deem unpleasant (this is very similar to the fallacy concerning the modern notions of charity, which I previously addressed here). A man may be of sweet disposition towards his newborn son, and that sweetness may persist throughout the son's life. However, a father who catches his son in the act of doing something wrong may need to address that particular situation with something other than a kind word and a smile. This may not affect the generally sweet disposition of the father toward the son, though the son may certainly wonder where the sweetness has gone while he is being punished.

By the same token, the person who treats his enemy with kindness is certainly displaying a form of heroic virtue. However, at times that kindness may have to be exercised in the form of restraint while using force. Being sweet does not mean being a doormat, and it certainly does not mean letting others get away with murder (literally or figuratively). It is, as are all virtues, a disposition of the heart that requires a well-informed understanding of right and wrong in order to be exercised properly.

So we see that sweetness, contrary to being the product of ignorance, is in fact an exercise in virtue; specifically, an exercise in the theological virtue of charity. And like any other exercise in charity, it is exercised most appropriately in ways the secular modern world either cannot or will not understand.

The thoughts for this blog post did not flow as smoothly as I would have liked, but I hope it served the purpose of getting you to look at the virtue of sweetness in a new light. There are parallels here to the virtue of innocence that I would like to address sometime soon. In the meantime, I pray all is well with each of you. God bless!


In Jesus and Mary,
Gerald