Easter 2026 - Reading #25 - Fortitude | Catholic Daily Reflection

C.S. Lewis, in The Problem of Pain, addresses the fortitude required to trust God's goodness in the midst of suffering: "We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven, a senile benevolence who, as they say, 'liked to see young people enjoying themselves,' and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, 'a good time was had by all.' I should very much like to live in a universe which was governed on such lines. But since it is abundantly clear that I don't, and since I have reason to believe, nevertheless, that God is Love, I conclude that my conception of love needs correction."

Lewis continues: "Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness. Kindness cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering. Love would rather see the beloved suffer much than be happy in contemptible and estranging ways. Love is not a sentiment but an exacting passion. If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness. And it appears, from all the records, that though He has often rebuked us and condemned us, He has never regarded us with contempt."

For Lewis, the gift of fortitude is ultimately grounded in trust, the trust that the God who permits suffering is a God whose love is more severe and more splendid than our comfort-oriented definition of love can accommodate.

Twenty-six days in. Lewis dismantles the false god of comfort, the "grandfather in heaven" who only wants us to have a nice time, and confronts us with the real God: a Father whose love is demanding precisely because it is real. The gift of fortitude requires this theology. If God's purpose were merely our comfort, then suffering would be meaningless and endurance would be pointless. But if God's purpose is our transformation, our becoming fully the people he created us to be, then suffering is sometimes the necessary path, and fortitude is the gift that enables us to walk it.

Lewis distinguishes love from kindness, and the distinction is vital. Kindness wants to relieve suffering at any cost, even the cost of the sufferer's growth. Love wants something higher: the genuine good of the beloved, even when that good requires a passage through fire. Every parent understands this instinctively. The parent who never lets their child struggle produces a fragile, dependent adult. The parent who allows appropriate suffering, the frustration of learning, the pain of consequences, the loneliness of growing up, produces a resilient one.

The Easter season holds this tension beautifully. Christ's suffering is over. The resurrection has happened. And yet we still suffer. The gift of fortitude does not explain suffering, that mystery remains. But it enables us to endure it with trust rather than bitterness, with hope rather than despair, knowing that the God who raised Christ from the dead is working in all things, including the painful ones, for our good. Today, bring your suffering to the risen Christ. You do not need an explanation. You need the strength to keep walking. Ask for it. He has it to give.

Walk this season with us.