Lent 2026 - Reading #16 - Fortitude
Reading
Saint Augustine reflects on the nature of courage in his work on patience: "The virtue of the soul which is called fortitude is clearly a witness to the existence of evils which must be borne. That these evils exist is not to be attributed to God but to the disorder introduced by sin. Fortitude does not make us insensible to suffering; it makes us capable of bearing suffering for the sake of what is good." Augustine continues in the City of God: "In this mortal condition, the virtues themselves, which are certainly the best and most useful possessions of man in this life, bear truthful testimony to human miseries, precisely because they are needed to combat our dangers, our toils, and our sorrows. If these virtues are genuine, and such can exist only in those who are endowed with true piety, they do not profess to have the power of insuring that the persons who possess them shall suffer no miseries." For Augustine, fortitude is never a denial of pain. The brave soul feels the full weight of suffering but chooses to bear it rather than abandon the good. This is not stoic detachment but Christian engagement, a willingness to enter into the world's brokenness armed with nothing but faith and the love of God.
Reflection
Sixteen days into Lent, the season's weight is beginning to settle. The initial enthusiasm of Ash Wednesday has faded, the novelty of our Lenten disciplines has worn off, and the long middle of the journey stretches before us. This is exactly when fortitude matters most. Our pilgrimage through the virtues is not a sprint but a sustained walk, and today Augustine reminds us that the need for courage is itself a sign of our broken world. Augustine refuses to let us romanticize suffering. Fortitude is necessary precisely because life is genuinely hard, and pretending otherwise is not virtue but denial. The brave person does not say "this doesn't hurt", they say "this hurts, and I will bear it for the sake of something greater." Lent teaches this lesson through the body. The hunger of fasting, the tedium of sustained prayer, the discomfort of honest self-examination, these are small sufferings, but they school us in the habit of choosing good over comfort. If you are feeling the drag of Lent today, if the disciplines feel pointless, if prayer feels dry, if you wonder why you bothered, take heart. This is not failure; this is fortitude being forged. The virtue is not in never struggling but in continuing through the struggle. Augustine knew this from his own long conversion. The road to God is not always lit; sometimes we walk by faith alone, and that walking is itself a form of courage.