Courage In Front Of Life

It is not so easy to live in the present, for when we want to grasp it we feel it slipping through our fingers like sand and carrying us into the unknown.
It is useless for us to plead, “O Time, cease your flight!” for we cannot hold it back even for an instant.
Some times, from the depths of our unconscious, fears rise up that have accumulated through long years; they combine and form a mass of indistinct, faceless disturbances that weigh us down and almost submerge us.
If we want to overcome this kind of fear in a peaceful acceptance of ourselves.
We need a new faith in someone stronger than ourselves.
We need confidence in the One who has called us into being and who draws us to himself, the One who is flawless and eternal Being.
The Lord invites us to love the little scrap of existence he has entrusted to us, which is like a fragile skiff on the tossing ocean of the world.
For it is by means of this that we shall one day come to the Promised Land, guided by the sure compass of faith . . .

Finally, there is the courage to endure: perseverance.
Perseverance binds together our past and present in their incessant ebb and flow, so as to build a solid future.
Regardless of what some false prophets say, there is no future worth our pains without perseverance and faithfulness.
No solid building, no work of value can be constructed, speaking from either a human or a spiritual vantage point, without our unflagging effort in time and our vigorous resistance to the forces of wear and tear and disintegration that bear down on us.
It takes a long time to produce a man, and only the one who perseveres to the end will reach the Kingdom.
Without the courage to endure, no enterprise that is worth the name will last; the fairest promises will dissolve into idle boasts.
The test of time is, for us, the touchstone of reality.
“My truth,” wrote Saint-Exupery, “must be firm, and who will love you if you veer and change your loves every day, and what will become of your great schemes? Continuity alone will bring your efforts to ripeness.”

Father Servais Pinckaers, O.P.

Father Pinckaers is professor emeritus of moral theology at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.