Every man has to learn how to fly and how to fall.  At least that’s what my older brother William thought. When I was in about fourth or fifth grade, my older brother by six years, William, would give me different tasks and challenges to make a man out of me. He set me on a regiment of push-ups, sit ups, etc. every morning and every night, for which I am very grateful. He would also give me more challenging tasks to do, that usually involved courage or daring.  It was a little like the twelve labors of Hercules, but the labors never seemed to be finished and usually ended with me crying and him offering to do some kind of penance so that I would forgive him.

One day he decided to teach me how to fly–or something pretty close to it.  He told me to run toward our jungle gym, grab the two rings hanging down, swing out and do a full backflip with my body completely straight-out (Later, when I joined a gymnastics team, I learned that this kind of flip is called “a layout”).  I was of course terrified and absolutely did not want to do it.  But he wanted me to do it. (He did not force me to do any of these things, by the way.) He thought that this was really something I needed to do.  So I did it.  I ran at those rings, grabbed hold of them, and did a backflip with my whole body extended just as he said, and somehow, miraculously, I landed it perfectly.  It was incredible.  He taught me how to fly.  

I believe that every man has to learn how to fly and how to fall if he is ever to become virtuous, that is, become a manly man.  Virtue is a formidable sounding word.  It sounds hard and cold and upright, like an uncomfortable chair.  It might sound a little boring to you as well.  It certainly doesn’t sound like flying.  But listen to this description of heroism, for which, I believe, the author, Charles Peguy, would happily substitute the word virtue:

Heroism [or Virtue] is essentially a skill, a condition and an act of sound health, good spirits, joy, even merriment, almost a frivolous playfulness–in any case, an act of pleasure, well-being, an act of the unconstrained, relaxed, productive person, of security, self-mastery, almost (so to speak) of custom and routine, of good manners.  It is without any posturing or ulterior motive, and, above all, without any self-pity; without sighs and lamentations, without the wish to win a reward.  The person who only wants to win is a bad player.  What makes a great player is the will to play.  He would far rather play without winning than win without playing.     

To me, that description sounds very appealing.  If that is what virtue is and feels like, that sounds pretty good.  So let’s try to get at it a little more directly.  What exactly is virtue?

A recent philosopher tells us “Virtue is the utmost of what a man can be; it is the realization of a man’s capacity for being.”  So virtue should concern us because it is that quality of being a person–in your case being a boy becoming a man–that your nature most wants you to be.  To be virtuous means to be most fully what you are.  Think of a perfectly ripe peach.  That would be a virtuous peach.  Or a well-constructed table, made of solid wood, perfectly and beautifully constructed for the purpose it serves.  That would be a virtuous table.  The perfect peach is what it was meant to be.  The perfect table is what it was meant to be.

For a man, attaining virtue is more like constructing a table than growing into a fat and delicious peach.  We do grow in virtue, but we have to assist that growth just as the carpenter must plan and work to construct a virtuous table or chair or house. To understand the word “virtuous”, you might think of a beautifully executed play in soccer or basketball or rugby.  That is beautiful: it brings joy to your heart because it was so perfectly done.  That would be a virtuous action on the playing field.  Or you might think of a beautiful shot–with a basketball, an arrow, or a bullet–each hitting their targets perfectly. That is virtue. Anything acting in accordance with its purpose and function is virtuous.

Aristotle takes us a bit further in making the bold claim that to be happy means to be acting “in accordance with virtue.”  And from what we have already explored this makes perfect sense–for something is happy only when it is acting wholly according to its true nature and function–which is another way of saying, virtuously.

So how does one act virtuously so that one can be happy, so that one can be fully oneself, fully alive, most truly in accord with one’s most authentic self and being?

Let’s turn to the story of Icarus–one of the very best stories about flying and falling–to see if we can find any answers there.  I am going to read you a modern poem by W. H. Auden called Musee des Beaux Arts to bring us into that strange, wonderful and ancient story:

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

You might think that the idea of a boy (about your age, I should think) flying and then falling out of the sky would have nothing to do with what it means to be virtuous for a boy becoming a man.  But I think flying perfectly captures the aspirations, the hopes, the wild and whimsical desires of a young man.  The desire to fly, to go higher, to see all of creation in a soaring fashion, and then to look up and reach for and touch the sun itself.  These kinds of thoughts and desires are the very stuff (and some might say nonsense) of youthful yearning and striving.  And I believe that this impulse is holy.

There is a holy fire in a young man that wants to burn and fly through the heavens: to burn like sparks from a fire, to fly like an arrow from a bow, to burn like a star shooting through the sky.  And this yearning, this fire, has to do with a young man’s deepest desire for fulfillment, in other words for being his most authentic self, for attaining a life of perfection and virtue.

But in the story we have been considering, Icarus flies too high and then his wings melt and then he falls to his death.  What is that supposed to mean for us?  That a young man should stay away from those yearnings in his heart?  Don’t even put on those wings–you can almost hear his mother say–don’t try flying. It’s really too dangerous.  Learn to be a good boy who prizes safety above all things.  Don’t go after anything too much. Don’t try things you don’t know how to do well. And definitely don’t do things that could get you hurt!

Is that the moral of this famous Greek story?  Not quite.  That interpretation would be overstating things a bit much. But the story does seem to caution one to a moderation of spirit. “Beware of going too far”, it says, “Take heed of the warnings of your elders, especially of your father who loves you and knows what is best for you.  Be cognizant of your limitations, the limitations of both your personal abilities, and of your equipment.”

Because, let’s face it, this is a terrible tragedy that occurred because of an equipment failure.  Icarus’ wings simply fell apart when he got too near the sun. The wax melted away.

Is this story about the virtue of prudence then?  Prudence is the most important of all the virtues because it is the virtue, or power by which the mind and heart of a man is able to assess the fullness and depth of what is really real.  Prudence is the power by which man knows things as they really are.

If this is a tale about prudence, or rather the lack of prudence, then it is telling us about the dangers of not being fully aware of the world and of ourselves, so that we can know what we can and cannot, or should and should not, attempt to do.  Be daring, yes! Even learn to fly! But first be fully aware of the situation: know yourself, know the nature of the air and the wind, and the sun, and especially know the capabilities and limitations of your equipment. Know how wings made of leather and feathers and wax, work for heaven’s sake!  This is all very good advice.

On a deeper level, however, we can discern a caution about the limitations of the human: the story is telling us to stay within the properly human realm.  Don’t dare to transcend (or rise above) the human realm.  Man has a spark of divinity in him, but he is mortal, he is made of clay and should not ever make the mistake of thinking that he is or can become a god.  To do this is to commit what the Greeks called the sin of hubris, which bears some similarity to what we call the sin of pride.

So, looked at in this way, the tale is a story of transgressing beyond the bounds of the human into the realm of the divine.  Icarus falls because he commits the sin of hubris.  Man is godlike–so it is appropriate for him to make wings for himself and even to fly–but he must not try to fly beyond the realm of the human.  That is to court disaster.

According to this interpretation, the sun is not merely a glorious and enormous ball of fire, warming and sustaining the earth, it is also Divinity, the realm of the gods.  And Icarus’ decision to go higher and approach it too closely costs him his life.  This is not the result of a mere technological failure, it is a violent disaster due to the failure of piety, the failure to stay within proper human bounds.

There is much for us Christians to learn from this pagan Greek tale about the importance of prudence and the danger of hubris. But I think there are also problems with this story for us Christians.  The first problem is that this story presents a wholly human (or one might say a “merely human”) understanding of virtue.

Mastering the power of virtue, like mastering the power of flight, is completely and entirely within man’s grasp, in this story.  You must spend the time, do the research to figure out how to master the virtues.  But in the end, it is up to you to just do it.  Just do it!  The slogan from Nike (or Nikē, the Greek goddess of victory) perfectly encapsulates this vision of virtue and happiness. You, O man, are capable of being virtuous, and therefore happy, you must simply learn the proper actions and techniques.  But woe to you if you fail! Witness the destruction of Icarus.

Now there is certainly a great deal of truth in this view.  We all need something of that get up and go attitude that the Nike slogan appeals to: Just do it, for crying out loud and stop worrying or wasting time or procrastinating.

But there are also limitations to this view, and, pushed to an extreme, it is a view that Christians cannot fully endorse.  For we believe that God aids us in all of our efforts, that indeed everything is not entirely up to, or dependent on our strivings.  It is just as much, and even more so, dependent on God.  We actually need God’s help for everything.  We believe that we cannot be good without God’s help, God’s grace, and that God often holds us up when we cannot hold ourselves up.  The fact is that we cannot be virtuous without God’s grace, God’s help, and we cannot be happy without God’s friendship.  For Christians, happiness is not simply man’s affair and in man’s hands to achieve or not.  Happiness for a Christian means life and friendship with God–something that we obviously cannot achieve on our own.

By contrast, in the story of Icarus, learning to fly right or wrong–the image I have chosen for achieving virtue or happiness–is solely dependent on the effort and intelligence of man. In this story there are no angels to guide you or to protect your head from hitting against a stone when you fall.

And this brings us to the second problem of the tale: the caution against transcending human limitations and becoming godlike.  This seems like good advice for a Christian as well as a pagan.  Surely we can recognize echoes of the story of Adam and Eve attempting to grasp divinity with their own hands and on their own time, rather than being granted the gift of the Son, indeed the gift of Sonship in the fullness of God’s time.  But this, I believe, is where we really see something missing in the tale of Icarus’ flight and fall.  For as Christians we believe that man actually is destined to fly into “the Sun”, not into the burning fire at the center of our physical universe, but to fly into the Son and the sonship of God, and to do this not with wings we have constructed but on the wings of God’s love for us.

I would like to share with you a poem from a young poet from Saint Gregory’s Academy written many years ago, that I believe offers a kind of Christian response to the tale of Icarus.

O’er the Hills on wings sail I
In search of Heaven’s fairest beauty
In the hazy mistiness of sky
I search for her, my duty
Below me rocks and barren ground
Then archers’ arrows send me higher
And now the startled hunting hound
But not a sight or sound of heart’s desire
Past the stream and on a yonder mound
Stands a grey stone well
I looked in and uttered not a sound
To the ground cold and still I fell
In the well she lay
So on the ground I stayed.

What is different about the Icarus in this poem?  He too soars into the realms of glory.  He too has the “long thoughts of youth” that take him deeper and deeper into the mysteries and joys and wonders of reality. And he too experiences a fall.  Even a death.  But he is given an understanding to see that falling and even falling to death as something good, even if hard and bitter.  He somehow knows that in falling, he is also somehow being held, also somehow being caught by his father.

And I submit to you that this is the Christian understanding of the story of our striving after virtue “in search of heaven’s fairest beauty.”  It is and always will be a story of rising, flying, falling, and rising again.  For in your many falls, you will be caught. Whether your falls come from mistaken calculation, pride, cowardice, imprudence, or anything else.  Because that well where you lay, is also a good place.  A place where God is present to catch and heal and prepare you for your next flight.

This brings us to a fuller understanding of the virtue of prudence, for if prudence is the power of mind and heart by which one grasps reality in all of its fullness, then it would be most prudent for you to learn not only how to fly well but also how best to fall.  And before leaving the subject, I would like to tell you something that we as a faculty learned this summer during our study of the four cardinal virtues, about how to learn the virtue of prudence.  We discovered that prudence is learned through silent listening–listening to the speech of reality–the speaking of God to man.  Silent listening is donein prayer, in conversation with friends and teachers, and in conversation with everything you see, hear, touch, and smell in God’s world.  Only through this silent listening to the being of things, of yourself, and of God will you begin to glimpse the true desire of your hearts.

So, my advice to all of you young men as you begin this year is to not be afraid of flying! Or of falling!  Of learning new things, of putting yourselves out there.  Be bold, knowing that even failure, and often especially failure, can be your greatest teacher, a place where you can actually find the things you were seeking for in perfect success: “Heaven’s fairest beauty.”  So, really give yourselves fully to what you are about, to everything good we do here.  Give yourselves in the fullness of your hearts, in the fullness of your minds, in the fullness of your bodies, in the very fullness of your being!