Meditation of the Day The Courage to Stand in the Truth

Meditation of the Day The Courage to Stand in the Truth A brave man, who has produced that supreme act, that singular testimony to Christian truth which we call martyrdom, in one step passes from earth to heaven. No martyr sneaks into heaven like a thief; there is no martyr who stumbles into heaven as though he had been hurled along by a hurricane of prayer. There is no hesitation or dallying along the way for the martyr, that he might shine up just a little more for a fitting entry into the city of God. Rather the martyr sweeps into heaven like a conqueror coming home. That is precisely what he is. He has lost his life in order to find it; he has made the difficult choice of death in preference to desertion of the faith or of virtue. He has conquered death like his Master…. Such a man is certainly a man of virtue. He has stood firm in truth and justice, which is the very essence of virtue…. He is a brave man, for he has stood against the great evil of death in a private war for the divine good of virtue. He is a man of faith, for he has witnessed to that faith even at the cost of his life; and he is a man of charity, for the norm of friendship is sacrifice, and he has made the supreme sacrifice…. It takes courage to be human. It takes even more courage to be Catholic. And it takes still more courage to reach those sublime heights of Catholicism which are called sanctity. Or, to put it another way, courage is necessary for the practice of virtue. As a man becomes more and more virtuous, he faces more and more difficulties and so needs more and more courage. Man needs courage to face human life, for human life cannot be lived without virtue, without good habits, without reason being in command. By Catholic life a man steps above the limits of mere humanity; he must not only be human now, thoroughly human, he must be divinely human; his ends are no longer the ends of mere man but the ends of God.