When St. Thérèse of Lisieux was thirteen, she overheard her father saying something critical about her when they got home from Mass on Christmas eve. She was the baby of her family and prone to constant emotional storms, bursting into tears over the smallest things.

Her sister Céline told her not to go downstairs right away so she wouldn’t cry about the comment in front of her father, but something had changed inside of Thérèse. She went downstairs and was as cheerful as if she hadn’t heard a thing. “Céline thought she must be dreaming,” she says in her autobiography (which tells you something about how different things had been before that), “But happily it was a reality; little Thérèse had regained, once for all, the strength of mind which she had lost at the age of four and a half” (Story of a Soul, chapter 5).

That was a special grace, but she kept growing and working on it her whole life. Later in her autobiography, she tells the story of a nun she was always irritated by. Knowing that her annoyance didn’t make sense and that love is built on something stronger than feelings, she resolved to pray more, smile more, and find ways to serve that sister, to the point that she stopped Thérèse one day to ask why she liked her so much (Story of a Soul, chapter 9). That’s a story of strength and flexibility, from someone who struggled to temper her stormy reactions.

The word “temperance” might bring the image of a well-crafted sword to mind. A skilled bladesmith tempers the sword by holding it in a very hot flame and watching carefully as the metal changes colour. His goal is to form a hard, sharp edge while softening the core of the blade, so it can bend when it needs to without losing any of its toughness.

Temperance makes us people who hold on to what’s important and let go of what isn’t. It’s the harmony and strength that protects us from snapping in a crisis.

That kind of balance takes effort. It’s easy to go to extremes, to overheat the core of the sword or underheat the sharp edge, and we all have our personal weaknesses. The classic example of temperance is moderation in food and drink, and it might be the easiest to recognize: one piece of cake is fun, but eating a whole cake in one sitting makes you literally ill. There are lots of other extremes, like anger (losing your temper), stuff (hoarding things or keeping something another person needs for yourself), and plans (ignoring last-minute changes or requests for help).

There’s another extreme most of us fall into: sound. Music is a great thing, but it could become a crutch if, for instance, your reaction to being sad is always leaning into the feeling by playing sad music. Are you able to feel your feelings without being carried by music? Are you ever afraid of the thoughts or prayers that come in silence?

Okay. We probably all know which extremes we tend towards. What do you do when you discover a habit that makes you too brittle or too changeable? To use the sword analogy one last time, “brittleness” could come from overheating the core through anger or inflexibility about plans or things, and “changeability” would mean underheating the blade with too much food, drink, or noise.

Re-tempering involves finding ways to turn the heat up or down, to come back from the extreme. St. Josemaría would recommend taking one spoonful more of the dish you like least at dinner, and a spoonful less of what you like most. You can set a three-second delay on your music app so you know you’re choosing to open it, not just getting pulled in out of habit.

Temperance isn’t always about fixing something that’s gone wrong: you can intentionally hold tighter to the things that matter more and let go of the ones that don’t. And it’s God’s love that matters most. You can let go of almost anything when you’re holding on to Him.

Little by little, this makes us into people like the ones Jacques Lusseyran describes working with him in the French Resistance: “I had not a single friend who had anything left to lose. They had given up literally everything except life. As a result there was not a trace of frivolity in them, none of those little sidelines… On my word of honor, the air was different where my friends were. There you could smell joy” (And There Was Light, translated by Elizabeth Cameron, Parabola Books, 1991, pg. 236 and 238).

In short:

• Definition: temperance is the harmony and strength that helps us hold on to what’s important and let go of what isn’t, and keeps us from snapping in a crisis.
• Young saints: St. Thérèse was thirteen when God gave her a special grace to face emotional storms with peace. She kept working on it throughout her life, and when she met a nun she didn’t get along with, she smiled and treated her so well that the nun thought she was one of Thérèse’s favourites.
• Books & movies: In And There Was Light, Jacques Lusseyran describes friends in the French Resistance who had totally let go of everything but their mission, and says that people could “smell” joy around them.
• From St. Josemaría: “We find ourselves able to care for the needs of others, to share what is ours with everyone, to devote our energies to great causes. Temperance makes the soul sober, modest, understanding... Temperance does not imply narrowness, but greatness of soul” (Friends of God, no. 84). More here.
• Practical tips:
  • Smile, serve, and pray for the people you find hard to get along with, because love is built on something stronger than feelings.
  • Reflect on what extremes you go to in your own life, from food and drink, anger, hoarding things, or inflexible about changing your plans, and find little ways to let go of what isn’t essential.
  • Make time for silence and practice listening to God’s voice and your own thoughts without music in the background from time to time.