Fortitude
It takes great heroism to surrender myself to God and trust in His mercy and forgiveness…
I have been reflecting on the virtue of fortitude. After all, this is considered one of the Seven Virtues of the Holy Spirit. And what does that really mean? After all, it is only with a spiritual virtue that I have any change of overcoming the real human weaknesses that my soul is plagued with.
How many times do I find myself falling into a pit? I consider a problem – the same problem I have considered from a whole variety of angles. I think about it one way and then flip myself into a pretzel and think about it another way. I consider one avenue to approach it or consider another avenue to approach it. One way leads me further into despair and another along the path to sin. I try to avoid the problem by gossiping or engaging in practices that lead me further away from God rather than closer to Him. I consider the feelings of others less and my own feelings so much more. And this is all contrary to what my Beloved would have of me. God Himself set an example for the behaviour that I should exhibit. He tells me that I am supposed to be concerned with the feelings of others. He tells me that I should be cognisant to the occasions and near occasions of sin in which I place myself. He lived that example Himself. It was not that He ate with sinners, but rather that He loved the sinner and through that love brought them to reject the sin.
And fortitude is a significant part of this action. After all it takes great courage and great perseverance to pull myself out of my old bad habits. One could even argue that without Grace it would be impossible for me to do such a thing. In fact, only through Grace is such a thing possible. How could one who is as weak as me ever think to love my Beloved. My only avenue to love Him is to ask Him to love Himself through my weak soul. The only prayer I could pray is to ask God to shine through my soul for love of God.
This is the action of the Saints. They make themselves as conduits of God’s love and that is why they are considered examples of holiness…
Saint Augustine said, “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” And what he really meant by this was that until we empty ourselves of the things that prevent us from loving God then we cannot achieve our purpose in this world, which is the love of God Himself…
Thomas Olmsted said it differently in “Manual for Men” at page 99 when he said, “The virtue of fortitude always calls for a certain overcoming of human weakness and particularly of fear. Man, indeed, by nature, spontaneously fears danger, affliction and suffering. Therefore courageous men must be sought not only on battlefields, but also in hospital wards or on a bed of pain. Such men could often be found in concentration camps or in places of deportation. They were real heroes.”
And I have been thinking of those heroes today as I have been thinking of fortitude. For it takes great heroism to surrender myself to God and trust in His mercy and forgiveness…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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