Moral and physical courage

Of course, people who stand on their own and refuse to join with others in what they know to be wrong, are often very unpopular.  That is why it takes a greater courage to stand out against what is wrong than to do some act of bravery which everyone will clap.  For example, it often takes more courage to walk away when dirty talk starts up, than it does to dive into a river to rescue a drowning person.  It is the difference between what we call moral courage and physical courage.  The Christians in the Early Church had both.  They made themselves very unpopular by refusing to go to wild beast shows because the shows were given in honour of pagan gods, but they were also ready to be thrown to the wild beasts rather than give up being Christians.

Doing good

Besides avoiding sin, we should also try to act positively to do good.  Suppose you notice that, whenever you are in the playground with a group of friends, there is a child in your class who is always left out and alone.  And suppose some of your friends start being unkind by calling the lonely child names.  You certainly should avoid joining in the name-calling, but you could also do a positive act of kindness by telling your friends to stop picking on the child.  You could go and speak kindly to the child and try and draw him or her into your group.  All of this takes courage but it is a way of being a good disciple of Jesus in your daily life.

The cure of sin

We cannot be cured of sin without God’s help.  By ourselves we can do nothing.  But we can be cured, gradually but surely, if we seek God’s help in three ways: daily morning and evening prayers, regular Confession and frequent Communion.  It is by our daily prayers that we keep in daily touch with God; by going to Confession we are separated from our sins; and by making our Communion God and ourselves become part of one another.  In the next two weeks we shall be talking about these two Sacraments.