I’ve been writing some things lately on the cardinal virtue of prudence (The ‘Mother’ of Virtues as a Remedy to Pervasive Surrealism, and Knowing the Real and Doing the Good, with more to come in a couple of weeks).
We should pray for this virtue as we strive to cultivate it more and more.
In the Church’s litanies of the Blessed Virgin and Saint Joseph, these blessed two thirds of the Holy Family are addressed respectively as “Virgin most prudent” and “Joseph most prudent.” When we pray these litanies, we implicitly ask for the virtues they mention while honoring Mary and Joseph for exemplifying them so wonderfully.
The Franco-Flemish Renaissance Catholic composer, Josquin des Prez, composed a sublime musical setting of a text by Angelo Ambrogini (1454 – 1494), O Virgo prudentissima (“O Virgin most prudent”). Here it is being performed by the Capella Sancti Michaelis:
