A Good Will Is Incomparably Good
May 21, 2025
“TO have a good will is to have something far more valuable than all earthly kingdoms and pleasures; to lack it is to lack something that only the will itself can give, something that is better than all the goods that are not in our power. Some people consider themselves utterly miserable if they do not achieve a splendid reputation, great wealth, and various goods of the body. But don’t you consider them utterly miserable, even if they have all these things, when they cleave to things that they can quite easily lose, things that they do not have simply in virtue of willing them, while they lack a good will, which is incomparably better than those things and yet, even though it is such a great good, can be theirs if only they will to have it?”
— St. Augustine, On the Free Choice of the Will
— Comments —
Kathy G. writes:
Good Will is something in the heart that is of God. I think it can be stifled, perhaps killed, but I don’t think a heart without it can grow it. And it increasingly appears that some people have no Good Will in their hearts, and have no conception of it. Some even consider it a fault, a weakness to be despised. They try to fill the place in their hearts where Good Will should be with material goods, worldly respect/fear, such poor substitutes.
Laura writes:
A good will cuts through chaos and confusion.
To possess good will we surrender to God’s will.
Holly S., from SoCal writes:
