WITH SAINT IGNATIUS DAY BY DAY

Passions are evil habits; virtues are good habits. Here, we are speaking of those passions and virtues that a person acquires and adopts through his actions and way of life.

Sometimes in the writings of the Holy Fathers, passions are also used to refer to various conditions of the spiritual illness caused in us by the Fall—various forms of sinfulness common to all humanity. These passions we are born with; virtues, on the other hand, are called the natural, inborn good qualities of man.

Such passions and such virtues do not leave a decisive mark on a person. What does leave that mark is one's inclination—adopted freely, through constant or frequent indulgence in that inclination, by regularly fulfilling its demands.