The virtues as a path of daily conversion.

The Catholic tradition names four cardinal virtues and three theological virtues. Together they describe the shape of a life healed and elevated by grace: seeing clearly, choosing justly, enduring faithfully, ordering desire, trusting God, hoping in him, and loving with charity.

The order below is an ascent, not a list. Prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance are cardinal — from cardo, a hinge — because the rest of the moral life turns on them, and because a pagan could in principle acquire them by practice. Faith, hope, and charity cannot be acquired at all. They are infused, given rather than earned, and they take the first four somewhere nature could not have carried them.

Catholic Daily Reflection uses these virtues as more than topics. They become a structure for prayer, a way of returning each day to the concrete habits by which faith becomes visible.