9. Healing the Root
Video Version
Audio Version
Time Stamps
2:00 - What is the will?
4:30 - External & Internal Senses
6:30 - Passions
7:00 - Reason
9:00 - Freedom
10:00 - The Effects of Personal Sin
12:15 - Virtue & Vice
16:30 - Three Options to Change
22:00 - Tree Images
Show Notes
To go deeper, read "Tree Model & Root Causes" from the Catholic Holistic Healing Series at https://www.becominggift.com/post/trees
The Will as Rational Appetite - "The will is a rational appetite. Now every appetite is only of something good. The reason of this is that the appetite is nothing else than an inclination of a person desirous of a thing towards that thing. [...] everything, inasmuch as it is being and substance, is a good, it must needs be that every inclination is to something good. [...] since every inclination results from a form, the natural appetite results from a form existing in the nature of things: while the sensitive appetite, as also the intellective or rational appetite, which we call the will, follows from an apprehended form. Therefore, just as the natural appetite tends to good existing in a thing; so the animal or voluntary appetite tends to a good which is apprehended. Consequently, in order that the will tend to anything, it is requisite, not that this be good in very truth, but that it be apprehended as good. Wherefore the Philosopher says (Phys. ii, 3) that 'the end is a good, or an apparent good.'" St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II 8.1 - https://www.newadvent.org/summa/2008.htm
The Will Chooses the Perceived Good - "The Beatitudes respond to the natural desire for happiness. This desire is of divine origin: God has placed it in the human heart in order to draw man to the One who alone can fulfill it: 'We all want to live happily; in the whole human race there is no one who does not assent to this proposition, even before it is fully articulated.'(St. Augustine, De moribus eccl.)" Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1708 - https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a2.htm
The Internal & External Senses - https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1078.htm
External Senses = seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling
Internal Senses = memory, imagination, judgment, common sense
The Passions "The term "passions" belongs to the Christian patrimony. Feelings or passions are emotions or movements of the sensitive appetite that incline us to act or not to act in regard to something felt or imagined to be good or evil." Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1763 -https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a5.htm
Reason - "For to understand is simply to apprehend intelligible truth: and to reason is to advance from one thing understood to another, so as to know an intelligible truth. [...] man arrives at the knowledge of intelligible truth by advancing from one thing to another; and therefore he is called rational." St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I 79.8 - https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1079.htm
Freedom - "Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one's own responsibility. By free will one shapes one's own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude." Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1731 - https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a3.htm
How personal sin changes us - "since the inclination to the good of virtue is diminished in each individual on account of actual sin, [...], these four wounds [(ignorance, malice, weakness, concupiscence)] are also the result of other sins, in so far as, through sin, the reason is obscured, especially in practical matters, the will hardened to evil, good actions become more difficult and concupiscence more impetuous." St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II 85.3 - https://www.newadvent.org/summa/2085.htm
Virtue - "A virtue is an habitual and firm disposition to do the good. It allows the person not only to perform good acts, but to give the best of himself. The virtuous person tends toward the good with all his sensory and spiritual powers; he pursues the good and chooses it in concrete actions." Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1803. - https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s1c1a7.htm
Three options to change:
Try hard to act at the moment of choice
Change the environment to present better choices
Heal the roots to change the passions and relationship with temptation.
See the tree images referenced in the article at https://www.becominggift.com/post/trees
John Paul II Healing Center - https://jpiihealingcenter.org/
Institute for Functional Medicine - https://www.ifm.org/functional-medicine/
To go deeper, read "Tree Model & Root Causes" from the Catholic Holistic Healing Series at https://www.becominggift.com/post/trees
