In a recent video, I went over several great resources that can help you identify, and overcome your predominant fault. After several years of listening to Sensus Fidelium and Fr. Ripperger, I was excited to share some of my favorite YouTube talks, books and other resources I’ve found and that I think can help others. Find them mentioned on the video.
THE PREDOMINANT FAULT: Resources to IDENTIFY and OVERCOME IT! #lent #catholicmom #catholicwife
Click below to download a printable version of the Four Temperaments table.
Additional Resources
Handbook of Spiritual Perfection:
Fr. Ripperger Virtue List:
Sensus Fidelium Talks (on the four temperaments and how they relate to the predominant fault):
EXAMPLE OF FORMAL PRAYER FOR NOVENA TO OUR LADY OF SEVEN SORROWS:
Most Sorrowful Heart of Mary, over the course of the next nine-days, I consecrate to Thee my novena made in honor of Your Seven Sorrows. Through the sword that pierced Thine own Heart, please reveal my greatest defect and hidden mystery of (list your own question- area in your life etc.). I also lay before Your Immaculate Heart the following request (insert). I am confident in Your love for me as your child and simply wish to live a perfect life, pleasing to Your Divine Son. I thank Thee in advance for all the graces You are and will bestow on me; and I pray for the particular grace, when this novena ends, to have an eternal devotion to Your Sorrows and invoke Thee in times of joy, as well as sorrow, all the days of my life. When the day and hour comes, for the veil to be lifted, when I see Thee face to Face, I only ask that Thou be the One to present me to Christ the King, when I depart this vale of tears, in great hopes of finally entering eternal life. Amen. (prayed once or several times a day throughout novena- or you can write your own, this is just an example of “formal” prayer).”
Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange:
“The predominant fault is the defect in us that tends to prevail over the others, and thereby over our manner of feeling, judging, sympathizing, willing, and acting. It is a defect that has in each of us an intimate relation to our individual temperament. There are temperaments inclined to effeminacy, indolence, sloth, gluttony, and sensuality. Others are inclined especially to anger and pride. We do not all climb the same slope toward the summit of perfection: those who are effeminate by temperament must by prayer, grace, and virtue become strong; and those who are naturally strong, to the point of easily becoming severe, must, by working at themselves and by grace, become gentle.
Before this progressive transformation of our temperament, the predominant defect in the soul often makes itself felt. It is our domestic enemy, dwelling in our interior; for, if it develops, it may succeed in completely ruining the work of grace or the interior life. At times it is like a crack in a wall that seems to be solid but is not so; like a crevice, imperceptible at times but deep, in the beautiful facade of a building, which a vigorous jolt may shake to the foundations. For example, an antipathy, an instinctive aversion to someone, may, if it is not watched over and corrected by right reason, the spirit of faith, and charity, produce disasters in the soul and lead it to grave injustice. By yielding to such an antipathy, it does itself far more harm than it does its neighbor, for it is much more harmful to commit injustice than to be the object of it.
The predominant fault is so much the more dangerous as it often compromises our principal good point, which is a happy inclination of our nature that ought to develop and to be increased by grace. For example, a man is naturally inclined to gentleness; but if by reason of his predominant fault, which may be effeminacy, his gentleness degenerates into weakness, into excessive indulgence, he may even reach the complete loss of energy. Another, on the contrary, is naturally inclined to fortitude, but if he gives free rein to his irascible temperament, fortitude in him degenerates into unreasonable violence, the cause of every type of disorder.
In every man there is a mixture of good and bad inclinations; there is a predominant fault and also a natural quality.”