Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Meditation for June 4, The Gift of Fortitude

An Hungarian author of meditations for youth relates that once upon a mountain road an auto making a sudden turn, while travel­ing at full speed, came upon a rather indistinct mass lying directly in its path. There was no time to put on the brakes. The machine overturned the obstacle, then stopped, and the passengers got out.

Do you know what the auto crushed? A giant eagle. There it lay, annihilated by a machine traveling along the ground - the royal eagle who lives and moves habitually in the heights.

And why?

Because the eagle, having noticed some carrion in the middle of the road, rushed upon it, forgetting all, its nest, its little one, its flights in the azure and the sunshine. It swooped down, lodging upon this prey already in a state of putrefaction, and from then on, no longer saw or heard anything else. The auto sounded its horn. But what did that matter? The eagle was digging its beak into the flesh; he was feasting.

A flash! All is over! Nothing remains but crushed flesh mingled with other crushed flesh.

How many souls, made like the eagle for the heights, are sud­denly brought to earth by a base lust? The warning signal of danger sounds, but the soul pays no heed. Ruin follows - all because the soul lacks the virtue of strength.

I need the courage of a more attentive vigilance; the courage of a more marked resistance against the allurements of nature, so that if some day lust should awaken, brutally strong within, for religious life is not necessarily a guarantee against such tempta­tions, I will have sufficient energy to realize its treachery and throw it off.

A profane author, trying to be witty, wrote, "We resist every­thing except temptation." That's a mistake. By praying for strength and by training the will for a considerable time, I can hold out, I can do all things in Him who strengthens me. That is the truth!
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Adapted from Meditations for Religious
by Father Raoul Plus, S.J. (© 1939, Frederick Pustet Co.)

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