If you’ve never been to a Buc-ee’s before, there’s really no way to comprehend the experience: 120 gas pumps, 80 fountain drink dispensers, 31 cash registers. Returning from my annual retreat with a few brother priests, the car ran low on gas, so we stopped at Buc-ee’s. I thought we just needed fuel, but Buc-ee’s had a different plan: dozens of fridges, countless aisles and a beaver mascot walking around the store. I didn’t know I wanted sugar-roasted pecans until the delicious smell overwhelmed me. I didn’t know I wanted a barbecue grill until I saw 50 lined up. If there ever was a gas-station embodiment of the American dream, I found it off I-75.

Faced with all the choices, what was I to do? How does the American dream avoid becoming a consumerist nightmare? After a week of peace and tranquility at the Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament, I was quickly tempted to forget the beauty of the Poor Clares’ prayerful poverty and return to my parishes with way too many inconvenient conveniences. What I needed—as Father Gregory Pine, O.P. so masterfully explained in his recent book Prudence: Choose Confidently, Live Boldly—was prudence.

Father Pine acknowledges that prudence is frequently misunderstood; the word itself evokes a mild boredom at best, with connotations of paralyzing caution. In other words, it is the enemy of fun and happiness. However, as the author makes clear from his subtitle and throughout his book, prudence is not the enemy of our happiness but its servant and safeguard. Every human being—whether just walking into Buc-ee’s or discerning his vocation—faces choices. Amid these choices, multiple values and goods are at play. How does one choose confidently and live boldly amid the plenitude of (non-essential) possibilities?

We need a life of virtue through which we are not just free from sin, but free for good and impelled joyously towards it. More specifically, we need prudence through which we can survey the possibilities in counsel, make a judgment about which is best and command that it should be done. Without prudence’s compass, we are left wandering aimlessly, lost not only in Buc-ee’s but also in life.

In his book, Father Pine preaches, like his spiritual father St. Dominic, the Gospel of God’s grace and our participation in that life through virtue. And like his teacher St. Thomas Aquinas, he teaches in a thorough and accessible way how we enter into such a life.

Read and apply this book to your life to grow in virtue: you will be happier, freer and more full of life! Prudence stands at the head of the virtues as their charioteer. Like a car driver, it directs all the vehicle’s component parts and passengers to get to their end. It will not only help you navigate the overwhelming choices at Buc-ee’s, it will also take you to much better places. Through the power of God’s grace given in Jesus Christ, prudence will help you to heaven, and make the journey there the best possible adventure. Father Pine’s book is a helpful guide on the journey.

Father Jacob Lindle is the parochial vicar for the Mary, Queen of Angels Family of Parishes.

Prudence: Choose Confidently, Live Boldly by Father Gregory Pine, O.P.; Our Sunday Visitor Press, 2022; 168 pages; $16.95.

This article appeared in the September 2023 edition of The Catholic Telegraph Magazine. For your complimentary subscription, click here.