30 Stories 30 Virtues
Fr José Mario O. Mandia
Spring Publications Ltd., Hong Kong
2021
102 pages
This delightful book is made up of thirty short chapters, each with a story, sometimes a very human one but which shows the importance of a particular virtue in each case. In the foreword the author begins by reminding us that the human virtues constitute the foundation for the supernatural virtues and quotes the Catechism of the Catholic Church which teaches the importance of the human virtues as “the fruit and seed of morally good acts; they dispose all the powers of the human being for communion with divine love”.
Fr. Mandia is a priest of the Opus Dei Prelature based in Macau and writes for O Clarim (The Bugle) Macau’s trilingual Catholic weekly. The book is a compilation of thirty articles written over a period between 2016 and 2017. Each one is short but packs a punch.
The very first article entitled “Be a Lady or a Gentleman, then be a Saint” builds on St Josemariá’s insistence that the human virtues are a necessary foundation for the supernatural ones, and has a lovely anecdote about a nobleman who like thousands of others went to confession with St John Vianney and then asked the assistant parish priest which noble family the Curé of Ars came from, only to be told he was from a simple peasant family. The nobleman was shocked as he had been treated with such refinement, he thought the Curé must have been from the nobility.
Another quotes the story of St John Paul who on the morning after the attempt on his life in 1981 when he was coming to and thought it was still Wednesday evening leaned over to his Secretary Father (now Cardinal) Dziwisz, and despite excruciating pain said, “We haven’t said Compline yet.” (Compline is part of the Liturgy if the Hours.) It certainly showed where his heart was!
There is a story from a book by Cardinal John Tong called Challenges and Hopes: Stories from the Catholic Church in China of a priest who for over thirty years was barred from practicing as a priest and forced to carry charcoal – hard work for a man not used to manual labour. Despite that, he was a model of meekness, and when he was allowed limited freedom of action in the 1980s over 800 people crowded into his church for Mass. Blessed are the meek….
Not surprisingly, he has plenty of quotations from St Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, but others get a mention too from Confucius to Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis, Mother Teresa and Teresa of Avila. One gem is the article on decluttering centred on Fumio Sasaki who lives in a tiny studio in Tokyo with three shirts, four pairs of trousers, four pairs of socks and not much else.
Some of the chapter titles are “Holiness is in the Details”, “The Gift of Friendship”, “Think Big”, “Going the Extra Mile”, “On Not Taking Yourself too seriously”, and “They Shall See God”.
The book is so easy to read, but following through on the points it makes is a challenge. Ideal for people of all ages.
About the Author: Pat Hanratty
Pat Hanratty taught Science/Chemistry in Tallaght Community School from its inception in 1972 until he retired in 2010. He was the school’s first Transition Year Co-ordinator and for four years he had the role of home School Community Liaison Officer.