🎧 Intro
Welcome to VirTrue, where we work together to turn away from vice and adopt the virtuous life we are all called to.I am your host, Jethro Higgins.
Today on VirTrue, we are discussing the virtue of Modesty (Modestia).
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🌿 Virtue Description
Modesty is the virtue that governs how we present ourselves in speech, behavior, and appearance according to reason and divine law.
St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that modesty safeguards human dignity by restraining what would expose, cheapen, or misuse the body or the self. It fosters humility, reverence, and moral integrity.
As a sub virtue of Hope, modesty frees the soul from dependence on attention, approval, or spectacle. Instead of seeking validation from the culture, the modest soul trusts that its worth is secure in God.
Modesty protects dignity. It resists the temptation to gain quick attention through exposure, shock, or excess. It allows the soul to live with interior freedom, moral clarity, and reverence for both God and neighbor.
⚠️ Vice of Deficiency: Impudence
Definition
Impudence is the lack of modest restraint in speech, behavior, or appearance, showing little regard for dignity or appropriateness.
Why it fits
Where modesty governs self-expression with humility and reverence, impudence removes the interior check that protects dignity and respect for others.
Description
Impudence often appears as shamelessness. It delights in exposure, provocation, and spectacle. It shows up in crude speech, inappropriate behavior, and attention-seeking conduct.
The impudent person treats exposure as self-expression rather than a failure of reverence. In a culture driven by influencers and outrage, impudence is often rewarded.
Where modesty protects dignity, impudence exposes it carelessly.
🔥 Vice of Excess: Prudery
Definition
Prudery is an excessive and fearful restraint that treats the body, human sexuality, and ordinary human expression as shameful rather than dignified.
Why it fits
Modesty is ordered by reason and protects dignity through reverence. Prudery exceeds reason. It replaces reverence with anxiety and silence.
Description
Prudery avoids appropriate discussion of the body, marriage, or sexuality even when truth or formation requires it. It polices language, condemns innocent joy such as dancing, and treats normal human expression as morally suspect.
Rather than guarding dignity, prudery shrinks it. It teaches fear instead of reverence and silence instead of wisdom.
🪞 My Life
I was often accused of being prudish growing up. Raised in an unchurched culture, I felt pressure to prove that I was normal and acceptable.
At times, I compromised modesty in speech to fit in. I learned the hard way that the people around you shape your interior life.
Strong relationships sharpen virtue. Weak ones erode it. God removed some influences from my life that hurt at the time, but protected my soul in the long run.
This is why I tell my children that it is better to have a few strong relationships rooted in shared values than a crowd of people who reward compromise.
🌍 The Secular Perspective
We live in a culture that confuses modesty with oppression and reverence with repression.
Public figures across the political spectrum increasingly excuse crude language and immodest behavior as authenticity or strength.
Marketing exploits immodesty because it works. Bare skin sells. Shock sells. Attention is currency.
Children are now exposed to immodest language and adult themes in media once considered safe. This desensitization erodes reverence and trains hearts toward excess.
Modesty today requires courage. It resists the spirit of the age and chooses dignity over applause.
🌟 Example Saint: St. Joseph
St. Joseph exemplifies modesty through quiet strength and reverent reserve.
Scripture records no words spoken by him, yet his actions reveal trust, obedience, and moral clarity. His silence is not fear. It is confidence in God.
Joseph protects Mary and Jesus without spectacle. He acts decisively and withdraws when necessary. He never draws attention to himself.
He teaches us that modesty is not hiding goodness or fearing the body. It is knowing when to act and when to remain hidden. It is guarding what is sacred with love.
💬 Tell Me What You Think
Share your thoughts in the comments and continue the conversation.Your reflections may be featured in future episodes when we invite guests to speak about this virtue.
✝️ Act of Modesty
O my God,
I acknowledge the dignity You have given me,
body and soul, created in Your image and ordered toward Your glory.
I resolve to guard that dignity
in my speech, my behavior, and my appearance,
so that what I reveal honors You and respects others.
Help me to present myself with humility and restraint,
not out of fear or shame,
but out of love for what is good, true, and beautiful.
I commit to modesty in all things,
so that my life may point beyond myself
to You, who are worthy of all honor and praise.
Amen.
🙏 Prayer
Lord, bless us with faith, hope, love, prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice that we may live as you intended man to live, in all virtue and righteousness. Help us to flee from sin, and avoid all temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Protect us with a spiritual hedge in front of us, behind us, above us, below us, to our right, and to our left, within us and all around us, and seal it with the blood of your precious Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Help us to keep you in everything that we think, say, and do. Amen.
🕊️ Go out and fill the world with virtue. Deus vult.
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