Complete catechesis of Pope Francis on strength

Strength is above all a victory against ourselves. Most of the fears that arise within us are unrealistic, and do not come true at all. Better then to invoke the Holy Spirit and face everything with patient strength: one problem at a time, according to our possibilities, but not alone! The Lord is with us, if we trust in Him and sincerely seek good. So in every situation, we can count on God’s Providence to be our shield and armor.

And then there is the second movement of the virtue of fortitude, this time of a more active nature. In addition to internal testing, there are external enemieswhat are the tests of life, the chases. The difficulties that we did not expect and that surprise us. Indeed, we can try to predict what will happen to us, but to a large extent reality is made up of imponderable events, and in this sea sometimes our boat is shaken by the waves. Fortitude then makes us resilient sailors, who do not get scared or discouraged.

Fortitude is a fundamental virtue because takes seriously the challenge of evil in the world. Some pretend that it does not exist, that everything is fine, that the human will is sometimes not blind, that the dark forces that bring death do not fight in history. But it is enough to look at a history book, or unfortunately even the newspapers, to discover the “nephants” of which we are partly victims and partly protagonists: wars, violence, slavery, oppression of the poor, wounds that have never healed and that still bleed. The virtue of fortitude makes us react and shout a resounding “no” to all of this. In our comfortable West, which has “watered down” everything a little, which has turned the path of perfection into a simple organic development, which does not need to fight because everything seems the same, we sometimes feel a healthy nostalgia for the prophets. But uncomfortable and visionary people are very rare.