You’re always welcome to post thoughts. I will do my best to respond! The entire Summa can be found online in PDF for downloading at this site. You’d want the prima secundae (I-II, first part of the second part) for the passions and virtues.

I have a few spontaneous reactions but no time for now to explore (untangle) them through hand and pen—my ‘way’—and my limitation, too. I intend to do that first, and then read your recommendation to refine my view and expression of it. Hopefully, it’s included in an abridgment of that work that I have on-hand. Question. May I return here with my follow-up? I don’t insist! :) I don’t mean to presume on your attention and time.

In any event, and again, thank you.

I wonder if you have read St. Thomas’ writing on the passions of the soul found in the Summa theologiae? If not, I recommend it, or some commentary on that part. What you outlined sounds similar to what Aquinas terms the irascible appetites (hope, despair, anger, daring, fear) and concupiscible appetites (joy, desire, pain, sorrow, aversion) (these are the “passions”) which are not a rational part of the soul, yet they, according to Aquinas (but some disagree with him), have potential for virtue just as the will and the intellect do. In other words, Aquinas locates temperance and fortitude as virtues in the passions themselves and not in the will. That is to say that one’s passions can actually become virtuous both by acquired virtue (from human effort) and infused virtue (from God by grace). I think that the Litany touches on this very notion, asking God for the grace (the infused virtue) to reform our desires and fears, not just our will.

In this sense, we can say that the emotions are not something to always be ignored or fought against, instead, the appetites can be reformed, renewed, however you want to call it, so that they become a virtuous part of us. Our actual tastes, by virtue, begin to change so that we no longer desire or hate things that we shouldn’t, but the closer we draw to God, our very passions–that pre-rational, animal part of us–begin to conform to grace and virtue.

Care for a long story? In support of my case? :)

A few years before I found this litany (pre-conversion), I had wondered just what exactly emotion as one of our faculties, is. I even plotted it and other parts of our make-up graphically to help sort out my ideas. The terms ‘emotion’ and ‘feelings’ are slippery when it comes to definition and are usually explained in terms of examples rather than by definition.

I concluded that emotion is a stirring in reaction to something we very much want or very much do not want for ourselves or others. I came to define it as a reflexive and irrational reaction to fear or desire, realized or imagined. This has served me well in navigating the ‘tangled webs we weave.’

After my conversion to the Catholic faith, the notions of fear and desire as precedents of emotion, led me down many other avenues of thought particular to the faith. They are gifts and burdens. They compare to passion. They are many things. But what is one to do with them, or about them?

Eventually I further concluded that emotion in and of itself is important only insofar as it is a God-given capacity in our makeup, with a purpose: not to be indulged which is immature; but to steer one to truth or to preservation. I’d say that regardless of type, any emotion at all is a ‘heads up’ or a call to action of some sort, to be discerned.

So! this Litany of Humility, and its address of fear and desire, really did grip me when I first saw it. Delivery of the fears and desires listed in it, frees us to love according to our potential, and as we ought – in the form of sacrifice or charity or forgiveness. The freeing, is pertinent.

Quoting a writing of mine, “Gratitude brings peace. Peace accompanied by clarity and empowerment. The beauty of such peace is that it doesn’t depend on outcome. Such peace is freedom. True freedom. Gratitude frees one from the shackles and prison of fear and desire, and the contrivances of fear and desire.” Gratitude is another big idea I’ve spent a lot of time with.

As a convert, it’s all tying up quite nicely for me. I live for these evolutions and discoveries, in a manner of speaking.

Thanks, Br. Thomas, for the space to reflect and think out loud. Perhaps something along this line will be my own next post…

So, God bless, glad to have you around!