How to Grow in Prudence

The Charioteer of the Virtues

Prudence is not one virtue among others: it is the one that directs all the others. A moral virtue inclines to the good — justice to rendering what is due, fortitude to facing danger, temperance to moderating pleasures — but none of them says, by itself, what must be done here, now, in this precise situation. That is the role of prudence: to apply the general good to the concrete case, to find the mean in which each virtue stands.

"It is called auriga virtutum*: it guides the other virtues by setting rule and measure."* — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 1806^[4] (auriga virtutum: the "charioteer of the virtues")

The image is exact. The charioteer does not pull the chariot — the horses pull — but without him the horses bolt or overturn. Likewise, it is fortitude that faces, justice that gives, temperance that restrains; but it is prudence that tells them when, how, and how far. Fortitude without prudence hurls itself into recklessness; justice without prudence becomes rigorism; liberality without prudence ruins itself. That is why St. Thomas, following Aristotle, ranks prudence first: it is the condition of all the others, for "there can be no moral virtue without prudence"^[5].

"The Prudent Man Looks Where He Is Going"

Prudence does not hover over principles: it bends down to concrete action, decided at ground level. That is the whole meaning of the proverb the Catechism retains to define it:

"The prudent man looks where he is going." — Book of Proverbs 14:15, in the wording retained in CCC § 1806^[6]

The simple, says the same verse, "believes everything"; the prudent man watches where he puts his foot. Not from sickly distrust, but because he knows that the moral life is not played out in fine general intentions but in the sequence of particular decisions. We do not "do good" in bulk: we do it step by step, choice after choice. Prudence is precisely the virtue of this step to be taken: it receives the good that conscience shows and devises the concrete path to reach it. "Keep sane and sober for your prayers," says St. Peter (1 Pet 4:7), in the wording retained in CCC § 1806^[7]: even the life of prayer requires this practical intelligence of the moment and the measure.

When Even Zeal Goes Blind

The most pressing reason to cultivate prudence is that no fervor can supply for its absence. One can be generous and spoil everything by clumsiness, courageous and lose oneself by imprudence, pious and make those around one miserable for lack of judgment. Good done badly remains an evil. The history of the Church — and that of every soul — is full of sincere zeals that wounded for lack of prudence: corrections made at the wrong moment, truths thrown out without charity, sacrifices imposed without measure.

St. Bernard, in Sermon 49 on the Song of Songs, gives discretion — another name for spiritual prudence — this exact role: it "is therefore less a virtue than the guide and rule of the virtues, the moderator of the affections and the mistress of morals"; "Take away discretion, and virtue becomes vice"^[8]. The stakes are therefore far from slight: to grow in prudence is to learn to keep everything else in our spiritual life from turning against the good it aims at.

Before the means, a decisive clarification: many do not seek to grow in prudence because they hold a false image of it — either they confuse it with timidity, or they take it for skill at getting out of trouble. The virtue of prudence is something else entirely, and defining it exactly is already half the journey.

Prudence Is Not Timidity

The word has aged badly. In common usage, "being prudent" means not getting involved, avoiding risk, keeping one's distance. This "prudence" of insurance policies and fear has almost nothing to do with the virtue. The virtue of prudence is not made to prevent action, but to make action good; it does not say first "careful, do nothing," but "here is precisely what must be done." It is positive, creative, daring when need be: it is what made the saints dare. A prudence that led only to abstaining would be suspect; it would resemble the burying of the talent condemned by the Gospel (Mt 25:25). The prudent man is not the lukewarm man: he is the man who acts rightly, and who dares what the good demands.

St. Thomas's Definition: "Right Reason in Action"

St. Thomas takes from Aristotle a formula of great precision: prudence is recta ratio agibilium, the right reason with respect to things to be done^[9]. Every word carries weight.

"Prudence is right reason in action." — St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 47, a. 2, quoted in the Catechism § 1806^[10]

It is a reason: it measures, orders, adjusts. It is right: it is not content with being clever, it aims at the true good. And it bears on action (agibilia) — not on what we make (art, which is recta ratio factibilium, right reason with respect to things to be made), but on free conduct, moral action. One can be an excellent artist and an imprudent man; one can make a thing well and conduct one's life badly. Prudence does not perfect the work: it perfects the agent, the one who acts.

A Virtue at the Hinge of Intellect and Heart

Prudence has a singular nature that explains its place. It is at once intellectual by its seat and moral by its matter^[11]. Intellectual, for it resides in practical reason: it knows, deliberates, judges. Moral, for it bears not on abstract truths but on good action, and it presupposes a right heart. Here St. Thomas says something momentous: prudence cannot exist without the moral virtues, and the moral virtues cannot exist without prudence^[12].

Why? Because prudence chooses the means, but it is rectitude of will that fixes the end. A man whose heart is twisted by avarice or pride will always see rightly what serves his passion, and falsely for the rest: his "prudence" is only skill at the service of a bad end. True prudence therefore supposes that one already loves the good: it is the intelligence of a right heart. That is why St. Augustine could define it as a form of love:

"Prudence is love discerning with sagacity what helps it from what hinders it [on its march toward God]." — St. Augustine, On the Morals of the Catholic Church, I, 15, 25^[13]

The Three Acts: Deliberating, Judging, Commanding

To grow in prudence, one must know where it can fail. Yet every prudent decision unfolds in three stages, and each can miscarry. St. Thomas distinguishes them with luminous clarity^[14].

The first act is to take counsel (consiliari): to examine the situation, weigh possibilities, seek the right means. This is the phase of deliberation, when one does not yet decide.

The second is to judge (judicare): among the paths envisaged, to discern which is best here and now.

The third, and principal, act is to command (praecipere): to move to action, effectively applying what was deliberated and judged. St. Thomas insists: it is this last act that defines prudence, for "practical reason [...] has commanding as its act," and it is there that it reaches its goal^[15]. A man who deliberates well and judges well but never executes is not prudent: he is irresolute.

How to read this table: prudence is complete only if all three acts are. One can be imprudent by skipping deliberation, botching judgment, or abandoning execution. Growing in prudence means caring for all three.

St. Thomas pushes the analysis further: he breaks prudence down into eight integral parts, as walls, roof, and foundations are the parts of a house^[16]. This anatomy is no scholastic luxury: it points very concretely to the qualities to develop in order to mature in prudence. Five regard knowledge of reality; three command action toward the future.

The Five That Look to Reality

To act well, one must first see well. This supposes five dispositions:

• Memory (memoria): prudence feeds on experience, and experience is made of memories. He who learns nothing from his past keeps repeating the same faults. "Experience arises from memory," notes St. Thomas^[17].
• Understanding (intellectus): the accurate grasp of the present situation, the glance that seizes what is really at stake, without mistaking the facts.
• Docility (docilitas): the disposition to let oneself be taught by those who know. No one is prudent alone; the prudent man questions, listens, agrees to learn from elders and sages.
• Shrewdness (solertia, eustochia): promptness in finding the right means, sometimes without time for lengthy deliberation — vivacity of judgment in emergencies.
• Reason (ratio): the capacity to reason, compare, conclude, applying universal principles to the singular case.

The Three That Command the Future

Once reality is well seen, action must be directed to its end. Three parts provide for this, and the first is so central that the Latin word for prudence derives from it (pro-videntia, "seeing ahead"):

• Foresight (providentia): ordering present action to the future end, seeing in advance where one is going. This is the part most proper to prudence — prudentia is almost synonymous with providentia^[18].
• Circumspection (circumspectio): weighing the concrete circumstances that can change the goodness of an act. The same gesture, good here, may be bad there; the circumspect man looks around.
• Caution (cautio): foreseeing obstacles and evils mixed with the good, to avoid the trap. In a world where "evil is mixed with good," acting well supposes guarding against the evil hidden in the apparent good^[19].

How to read this table: these eight parts are so many concrete worksites. One grows in prudence not by a vague general effort, but by working through these dispositions one after another — above all docility and foresight, the most neglected.

Like every virtue, prudence stands on a summit between two abysses. By defect, one falls into imprudence; but by perversion, one falls into a false prudence that has only the name of the virtue. Knowing both protects growth, for one can miss prudence by falling on either side.

By Defect: Imprudence

The first group of defects is imprudence properly so called: lack of judgment in action. St. Thomas distinguishes several species, which correspond exactly to the three acts of prudence that they ruin^[20].

Precipitation (praecipitatio) ruins deliberation: it is the man carried away by the impulse of his will or a passion, who "throws himself" into action without taking time to examine. The word says the image: one falls off a precipice. Every decision taken under the blow of anger, fear, or enthusiasm, without perspective, is precipitation.

Thoughtlessness (inconsideratio) ruins judgment: neglecting to weigh what should be considered, judging lightly, deciding without really looking.

Inconstancy (inconstantia) ruins command: abandoning, at the moment of acting, the good resolution already taken — from lightness, weariness, or yielding to a passion. One had judged well; one does not hold.

To these three is added negligence, the common root that slackens the attention required by good action^[21]. All these forms of imprudence have one deep origin: the haste of desire, unwilling to wait for reason to have done its work.

By Perversion: False Prudence

The opposite error is subtler, for it wears the mask of virtue. There exists a very acute, very effective practical intelligence that is nevertheless not prudence, because it is ordered to a bad end. St. Thomas calls it "false prudence" and distinguishes several forms^[22].

The most radical is prudence of the flesh (prudentia carnis): putting all one's intelligence at the service of carnal or earthly goods as if they were the ultimate end. St. Paul condemns it without appeal:

"To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law." — Letter to the Romans 8:6-7^[23]

This "prudence" is not lack of intelligence: it is intelligence diverted. The man clever for his own interest, skilful at procuring pleasure, money, or power, may be a fine calculator; he is no more prudent in the true sense, for he is foolish on the essential — he has staked everything on what passes away.

From this root come three other counterfeits: cunning or craftiness (astutia), which chooses deceptive, "feigned and apparent" means to reach its ends; guile (dolus), which executes this cunning by lying speech; fraud (fraus), which executes it by deceptive deeds^[24]. All ordinarily arise from covetousness, which drives one to employ falsehood to obtain what one desires.

Lastly, there is the false prudence of excessive anxiety over temporal things: not the prudent use of goods, but the devouring worry about tomorrow, which Christ expressly condemned. "Do not be anxious about your life [...]. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day" (Mt 6:25, 34)^[25]. The Christian must foresee with measure, but without that anxiety which makes the temporal an idol. For the right surrender of the future into God's hands, see How to Grow in Abandonment to God.

The "Human Prudence" That Stifles God's Works

This false prudence has a particularly insidious spiritual face: that of the religious man who, by calculation, fear of what people will say, or cowardice disguised as wisdom, refuses to serve a work of God. In the spirituality of the Divine Will, Jesus makes it a burning complaint to Luisa Piccarreta:

"And why all this? Because of human prudence. Ah! how many divine works have failed among creatures because of human prudence! Like idlers, they ended by withdrawing from the holiest works." — The Book of Heaven, vol. 24, 23 August 1928^[26]

"Human prudence" is here the exact opposite of the virtue: it believes itself wise and is blind, believes itself measured and stifles the good, calculates earthly risks and loses the essential. Christian discernment must therefore learn to recognize this ruse: not everything called "prudence" is prudent, and there exists a false wisdom that is, before God, only abdication.

The Mean: Right Judgment at the Service of the Good

Between these two edges, the virtue stands in balance: a right judgment ordered to the true good. It is firm, for it neither rushes nor gives up; it is upright, for it neither schemes nor calculates for bad ends. It is neither the heedlessness of the imprudent nor the wiliness of the schemer, but the intelligence of a right heart that sees reality and acts well.

How to read this table: prudence is not a fragile point between two dangers, but a fullness holding together true intelligence of reality and true uprightness of heart. One grows in prudence by moving away from both edges at once.

Here is the practical heart of this article. The spiritual masters did not only praise prudence: they indicated precise, repeatable means, within everyone's reach. They can be grouped into a few great worksites, which take up the eight parts of the virtue.

Asking for the Gift of Counsel

First means, and the highest: prudence is not only acquired by effort, it is received. To prudence as a virtue, the Holy Spirit adds the gift of Counsel, which perfects it by making the soul docile to His motions. The Catechism ranks counsel among the seven gifts that "complete and perfect the virtues"^[27], and St. Thomas shows that it answers precisely to prudence^[28]. Where human prudence deliberates painfully, the gift of Counsel makes one judge with an almost connatural rightness, under the Spirit's inspiration. The Christian's reflex, before a decision, is therefore not only to think, but to pray to the Holy Spirit: "Spirit of counsel, show me what I must do." Perfect prudence is asked for on one's knees before it is conquered.

Deliberating Before Acting, Never Rushing

Against precipitation, the means is simple and demanding: take time to deliberate. Do not decide under the blow of passion; let emotion pass before settling what can wait; distrust decisions made in anger, fear, or enthusiasm. Many spiritual masters recommend never answering or acting "while heated" on grave matters. St. Ignatius of Loyola made it a formal rule of discernment: in time of desolation — when the soul is troubled — never make any change, but remain firm in the resolutions previously taken^[29]: a troubled soul judges badly, as a troubled eye sees blurrily. Delay — when possible — is not indecision: it is the space in which reason regains the upper hand over passion.

Letting Oneself Be Taught: Docility and the Counsel of the Wise

The most neglected part of prudence is docility. Man wants to decide alone; the prudent man asks for counsel. St. Thomas makes it a condition of the virtue, for "in matters of action, circumstances are infinitely varied, and no man can consider them all sufficiently": one must therefore "have recourse to the counsel of others, especially of the wise"^[30]. Scripture repeats it:

"Let the wise hear and increase in learning [...]. Without counsel plans go wrong, but with many advisers they succeed." — Book of Proverbs 1:5; 15:22^[31]

Here prudence meets spiritual accompaniment: choosing a guide, opening one's conscience to him, accepting correction, is one of the surest means of growing in right judgment — especially for decisions of vocation and interior combat. See How to Grow in Spiritual Direction. Distrust of all counsel is almost always a sign of pride, and pride blinds.

Learning from Experience and Examining One's Conduct

Prudence feeds on memory. One grows in judgment by drawing lessons from past faults instead of repeating them. The daily examination of conscience is, in this respect, a school of prudence as much as of penance: it teaches one to see, after the fact, where discernment failed, and thus prepares better judgment for tomorrow. The prudent man capitalizes on his experience; he also observes that of others, of the saints, of history, so as not to pay for everything with his own mistakes. "Wisdom is having learned": no prudence falls from heaven readymade; it is built, day after day, on reality observed and pondered.

Foreseeing, Weighing Circumstances, Taking Precautions

Against levity, one must develop foresight, circumspection, and caution: before acting, look where the action leads (its end), look around (the circumstances: who, what, where, when, how, why), and look at obstacles (what can make the good fail). This does not mean calculating everything anxiously — that would be falling back into excessive worry — but posing the right questions to each important decision, in peace. True Christian foresight is distinguished from anxiety by its serenity: it foresees while surrendering to God what surpasses it.

Rooting Oneself in Prayer and Grace

Finally, prudence draws on the sources of grace. Prudence as a virtue acquired by human effort is real, but limited; infused prudence, given with charity, sees further, for it judges in the light of the ultimate end^[32]. That is why prayer, the sacraments, and the life of grace are no strangers to prudence: they purify the gaze and straighten the heart, without which judgment remains warped by the passions. A soul in the state of grace, attentive to the Spirit, judges better than a brilliant mind enslaved to its desires. Holiness is, in the end, the highest prudence: the saints almost always "saw rightly" where the clever went astray.

"Wise as Serpents, Innocent as Doves"

Christ summed up the balance of Christian prudence in an unforgettable image, sending His disciples into the midst of dangers:

"Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves." — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 10:16^[33]

The saying holds together what we always separate. The serpent, in the Bible, is the wary animal, attentive, knowing how to avoid the blow: the Christian must have this intelligence of danger, not be naive, know how to guard himself. But the dove is without gall: this prudence must never veer into cunning, distrust, duplicity. Prudence without craft, vigilance without malice: that is the exact point of the virtue. Too much dove without serpent is the naivety that gets devoured; too much serpent without dove is the wiliness that damns itself. Holiness holds both.

By what does one recognize real growth in prudence? Not by a feeling, but by stable fruits.

Right Action and Peace of Judgment

The first fruit is quite simple: one acts better. Decisions are more just, errors of judgment less frequent, regrets fewer. And with rightness comes peace: the imprudent man lives in the agitation of ill-weighed choices, retrials, damage to repair; the prudent man advances with a surer step, because he has learned to see before acting. This peace is not immobility: it is the assurance of one who knows where he puts his feet.

Interior Freedom

Second fruit: true freedom. The imprudent man is the plaything of his impulses and circumstances; he reacts, endures, is tossed about. The prudent man, because he deliberates and judges, truly chooses: he is no longer led by the passion of the moment or by external pressure. Prudence is thus the guardian of freedom: it makes man master of his acts, hence author of his life, instead of being merely its swept-along spectator.

Service to All the Other Virtues

Third fruit, the vastest: as it grows, prudence makes everything else grow. Since it is the charioteer of the virtues, its progress benefits justice (which becomes more just), fortitude (which becomes more measured), temperance (which finds its exact point), charity itself (which learns to love usefully). A prudent charity does the good the neighbor truly needs to receive, not the good we enjoy giving. Thus prudence, a humble and wholly practical virtue, serves the highest of virtues. See How to Grow in Charity.

The spirituality of the Divine Will, handed down through the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta (1865-1947), gives prudence its final accent by purifying it of all human calculation.

For the uninitiated reader, let us say it in one sentence: the "Divine Will" here designates the gift of living in God's Will — having but one single will with Him, and no longer merely doing His will as a faithful servant —, the third Fiat after Creation and Redemption, known by private revelation (what Jesus told Luisa) and not by the magisterium.

As seen, Jesus denounces with force the "human prudence" that makes God's finest works fail. But He also shows the path of true prudence: not the absence of discernment, but a vigilance wholly turned toward trust and truth. To Luisa, He teaches that prudence consists in giving no hold to distrust:

"The soul must be prudent so as not to provide the rope with which it can be bound, that rope being lack of confidence. This will be done by expanding its heart in confidence, while remaining within the circle of Truth, which is the knowledge of its nothingness." — The Book of Heaven, vol. 3, 5 February 1900^[34]

Prudence according to God is therefore not distrust but loving lucidity: it guards not against one's neighbor or the future, but against what could distance it from God — distrust, withdrawal into self, the idol of calculation. Growing in prudence, in this perspective, is not becoming shrewder: it is letting the divine Will enlighten judgment, until one sees each thing as God sees it. The highest prudence is then no longer an effort of reason, but the gaze of a heart abiding "within the circle of Truth."

One does not grow in a virtue by staring at it as an abstract ideal, but by contemplating those who lived it. Now prudence has its sovereign model in Christ Himself, "the wisdom of God" (1 Cor 1:24). All His earthly action is of perfect prudence: He knows when to speak and when to be silent, when to withdraw from those who want to seize Him "because His hour had not yet come" (Jn 7:30) and when to go up resolutely to Jerusalem; He foils traps without ever scheming, answering the Herodians "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" (Mt 22:21) with a rightness that disarms. His prudence is never calculation: it is the transparency of a will wholly surrendered to the Father, acting at the hour willed by Him.

After Him, the saints are history's truly prudent ones — not the most skilful, but those who best saw where the real good lay. The prudence of St. Benedict in his Rule, the measure of St. Francis de Sales in the direction of souls, the discernment of St. Ignatius of Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises: so many variations of one virtue, the intelligence of concrete good at God's service. Taking these masters as models is learning that holiness is not the imprudence of zeal, but the rightness of one who loves the good enough to know how to do it.

Prudence does not grow by grand theories, but by a small and repeated faithfulness in daily decisions. The means studied can be summed up in a simple program.

How to read this table: none of these exercises is spectacular; it is their faithful repetition that gradually forms right judgment. Begin with one or two, hold to them, then add more.

The essential thing is not to aim at prudence in general, but to posit, today, the concrete act presenting itself: this decision not to rush, this counsel to ask, this circumstance to weigh, this carnal calculation to unmask. For prudence is the virtue of concrete action; and concrete action is made only of particular steps. "The prudent man looks where he is going" (Prov 14:15): it is by watching each step that one learns, in the end, to walk straight.

• How to Grow in Justice, How to Grow in Temperance and How to Grow in Fortitude — the three other cardinal virtues that prudence guides like a charioteer.
• How to Grow in Spiritual Direction — the art of letting oneself be counselled, heart of docility, the master part of prudence.
• How to Grow in Spiritual Vigilance — the guard of the heart and thoughts, sister of prudence in the interior combat.
• How to Grow in Abandonment to God — surrendering the future to God, remedy for the excessive worry that false prudence turns into an idol.
• How to Grow in Faith, How to Grow in Hope and How to Grow in Charity — the theological virtues that prudence serves and makes active.