This year, Benedict is taking his first philosophy class. Called Virtuous Manhood, it is a study of what it means to be a man in the context of self, family, and society. Pausing to think deeply about a subject is uncommon, even though for centuries the words of Socrates have warned us: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

The trouble with virtue is that it requires more of us. Contending with difficult objective truths requires that we conform to them rather than they conform to us. We are quick to jettison ideas that become inconvenient, convincing ourselves that compromise will quiet the discomfort. But virtue and reality operate without needing our consent. However meticulously we reshape our perception, we encounter friction whenever it conflicts with the things that are right and beautiful and true.

Virtue is a metaphysical reality that cannot be changed. Its nature cannot be negotiated or compromised to accommodate us or our sensibilities. Something is just or unjust; an act is loving or it is not. There is no partial justice or semi-love. To be perfectly just, to be perfectly loving, requires wholeness.

Pursuing a virtuous life, however, is complicated. We can want, desire, and will it, but translating that into action is always a struggle because while virtue is perfect, we are not. I cannot hope to be perfectly just or perfectly charitable in this life, but what I can do is be consistent. I can choose a course of action, refuse to be defeated by episodic failures, and manage my life in a way that matches my desire even in my imperfection. When my choice brings discomfort, confrontation, or even isolation, those are the moments when I must recommit, knowing that I am working towards something worthy of sacrifice.

Virtue demands all of us because only when we lose ourselves to it can it give fully of its fruits. Pure love, pure justice, pure piety, these are things that possess raw power. Not the power to manipulate or control another, but the power to effect real change. We cannot take a dose of Tylenol and remain unchanged; how much truer that we cannot encounter real virtue and not be unaffected.

Choosing the virtuous life is not the easy path, and it is not free. It will cost us our ambitions, our misguided desires, and our complicated attachments. It is easier to do as one pleases, to declare thyself virtue, and live accordingly. In a measure of true courage, an act in the spirit of the Christian life, we can choose to surrender our imperfect selves and live a life of virtue. Not idleness and missed opportunity, but an extraordinary life worthy of the Love that chose to die to save it.