Virtue in ethical life according to Romano Guardini (2/3)
Life
Everybody has the inalienable responsibility to pursue salvation, as the ultimate meaning of life; each one builds one’s own dignity by realizing the good in the form proposed by one’s own conscience.
However, «goodwill» is often reduced to a comfortable «good sense», which avoids the unpleasant aspects of responsibility with pretentious opinions or distracting by insignificant or imaginary duties.
Those, who identify with other people’s opinions, lose responsibility by adapting, weakening or exaggerating the truth, while those, who simplify it, make violence to it.
Freedom of spirit makes people speak also in difficulties with courage and respect, faithful to the truth and resolute in responsibility, with secure and fruitful relationships, while on the contrary every lie destroys communion among men.
Man is entrusted with his own being, he can dispose of it in freedom and he is responsible with dignity and honor for what he does for his own and others spirituality.
Renouncing to one's own self, the nature shines in the deeds, while dignity and freedom shine with the respect of others.
God is not honored by neither belittling nor idolizing man. Created intelligent and responsible, man is capable of acting free from constraints of certainties about good; honored in judgment on the use that man will have made of his responsibility, he will be measured on the basis of his free initiatives and conscious decisions.
Guardini calls such trust in men «divine courage» for taking on the responsibility of repairing their many denials and disobediences.
In Creation and Redemption, God has never deprived men of responsible freedom, the gift of being able to do what is right.