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: 

  1. Try hard to act at the moment of choice

  2. Change the environment to present better choices

  3. 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

Andrew Reinhart

Andrew is the Parish Manager at Rosary Cathedral in Toledo, Ohio and has spent more than a decade in full time ministry. He holds a MA in Catholic Thought from St. Meinrad School of Theology and a BA in philosophy from the Pontifical College Josephinum.

http://PhysicallySpiritual.com
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10. The Intelligence of the Body

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8. A Plan for Healing