In many ways, they’re all I have to show for my life’s work.

But given that I’ve had to move house 12 times in the last 15 years, these books have become the bane of my existence. 

When a mate helps me move house, after lifting about the gazillionth box, they will often say “What are you doing with all these books? I thought priests were supposed to be poor!”

I usually respond with “Well I am poor! Poor me having to lug these books everywhere!”

Often after unsuccessfully searching through three boxes of books for a book I know I’ve bought four times, I’ll say to myself “Right! That’s it! I’m throwing ALL these books in the bin TONIGHT!”

But then I do a Scarlett O’Hara and think “I can't think about that right now. I'll think about that tomorrow!”

By the time tomorrow comes I’m usually thinking a little more prudently …  But usually only a little. 

We may not hear the word around much these days, but many things that happen or not are a direct result of someone exercising or not exercising “prudence”. 

It’s usually when people act without prudence that they make the news.

Whether it’s Adele the diva losing it on stage in Brisbane with some poor security guard, or the soccer player in South Africa last week accidently thanking both his wife and his girlfriend in his Man of the Match speech (better a red card than a red face), so much of what happens in life comes down to the virtue of prudence. 

So what is prudence? It’s basically knowing what we should do and what we should not do.

With a lot of things in life, you must make a choice – you can’t spend your life standing in the middle, for as Margaret Thatcher said, “Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides.”

Making decisions in our minds is like making steps with our feet; if we go one way we cannot go the other. We have to make a choice. 

The virtue of prudence helps us find ways to achieve our goals and even shows us how to avoid what does us harm. 

The boy who will not swing off a high rope without a safety net as his mates dare him is not being a coward; he is being prudent.

The girl who won’t wear the daring dress her friends dare her to wear out partying is not being a “prude”; she’s being prudent. 

But how do we obtain the ability to act with prudence?

The same way you obtain any virtue: practice and prayer.

But I’ll tell you something valuable; prudent decisions are almost always made slowly and imprudent actions are almost always rushed into.

So don’t let people rush you on important decisions.

Still, I like what the great Horace had to say about prudence: “Mix a little foolishness with your prudence: it's good to be silly at the right moment.”

I will leave you with the greatest musings in history on the subject of prudence, prudently made by prudence himself, Plato.

Coincidently, I was reading his life-changing musings on prudence in a book of mine just the other day, so I’ll go grab that book for you now from my boxes.

Give me a minute ...