READINESS TO FALL IN BATTLE

Fortitude presupposes vulnerability; without vulnerability there's no possibility of fortitude. An angel cannot be brave, because he is not vulnerable . To bebrave actually means to be able to suffer injury. Because man is by nature vulnerable, he can be brave.

By injury we understand every assault upon our natural inviolability, every violation of our inner peace; everything that happens to us or is done with us against our will; this everything in any way negative, everything painful and harmful, everything frightening and oppressive.

The ultimate injury, the deepest injury, is death. And even those injuries which are not fatal are prefigurations of death; this extreme violation, this final negation , is reflected and effected in every lesser injury.

Thus, all fortitude has reference to death. All fortitude stands in the preeence of death. Fortitude is basically readiness to die, or, more accurately, readiness to fall, to die, in battle.

Every injury to the natural being is fatal in its intention. Thus every courageous action has as its deepest root the readiness to die, even though , viewed from without , it may appear not reach down into the depths of the willingness to die is spoiled as its root and devoid of effective power.

Readiness proves itself in taking a risk, and the culminating point of fortitude is the witness of blood. The essential and the highest achievement of fortitude is martyrdom, and readiness for martyrdom is the essential root of all Christian fortitude. Without this readiness there is no Christian fortitude.

St. Thomas Aquinas in whose summa   an article deals with the so called "joys of fortitude, " says that the pain of martyrdom obscures even the spiritual joy in an act pleasing to God, "unless the overflowing grace of God lift the soul with exceeding strength to things divine."

[ Cf. Joseph Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues  , p.117-119]

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