It is in great danger
that you see great courage.
(French proverb)
In This Chapter
True calm is not the opposite of prowess or a feat of valor, as it may seem, but a condition for it. Authentic prowess must be entirely rational, and rationality presupposes calmness.
Merely risking one’s life does not characterize prowess. In true prowess, there is bravery and a kind of euphoria that is neither vanity nor pride. The spirit of prowess is one of the highest positions of the human soul, attained through calmness and correlated to it.
Cid the Champion, Burgos (Spain)
Examples of Prowess
Prowess is an outstanding action to attain a proportionate end, requiring extraordinary effort and sometimes significant risk. It can absorb a person’s existence and even threaten it by endangering or requiring his whole life to accomplish a particular work.
Prowess consists in taking risks at the edge of temerity when a person risks everything with just enough means. By giving everything, he develops his personality so that he is immersed in the atmosphere of the ideal for which he gives himself. It is one of the highest positions of the human soul.
To live to the full extent of the term is to be a man of prowess. In this life, you either go after an ideal that justifies prowess or do not live. This being true, the highest well-being on earth is found in prowess.
Hence, the saying of French parachutists: It is better to be an eagle for a minute than a frog for a lifetime. If one parachutes in a leap of sublime courage to take decisive action, he can crash to the ground but will have done his feat. His life will be fulfilled even if he is paralyzed in bed for the rest of his existence. [1]
A scholar can spend thirty years studying to prove a new scientific principle that no one found admissible and whose reality he finally demonstrates. This is a feat, for he discovered with effort something that everyone denied. He realized it was so and devoted a remarkable effort to prove it. Having obtained the proof, he changed and ultimately improved human knowledge about a certain sense. He fulfilled his life.
True prowess produces a kind of euphoria that is neither vanity nor pride. Save for a vague and spurious analogy, the prowess of a bandit is not beautiful and does not lead to happiness.
St. Therese of the Child Jesus
Religious Prowess
I have purposely spoken in entirely secular terms, but I will now apply this concept to religious aspects.
Imagine a newly ordained priest who hears the confession of a criminal and is bound to sacramental secrecy. After a while, he is accused of committing that very crime, from which he can defend himself by breaking the seal of confession. He refuses to do so and spends the rest of his life in prison while the criminal remains free. To endure this is a real feat.
At one point, about to die, the criminal asks another confessor to disclose that he was the author of the crime and provides the necessary evidence. When finally released from jail, the priest is an old man whose priestly life was spoiled, but he respected the sacramental seal. Who would dare deny that his life was a feat?
Father Damien, who went to do apostolate with the lepers on Molokai island (Hawaii) and became a leper, showed this holy prowess. [2]
So did St. Monica, who spent many years confidently praying for the conversion of her son, St. Augustine. She became famous for this feat.
There are a thousand forms of prowess in life. [3]
Our Life’s Prowess
Every life must have a feat of prowess, and I should strive for mine. What is my life’s prowess? It will find my life’s meaning when I see the prowess that should mark it. The Cross was the feat of Our Lord Jesus Christ. When they presented the Cross to Him, He kissed it with great affection, took it upon His shoulders with courage, and carried it to the top of Calvary, but not as something obnoxious and inevitable. That is how we must find and fulfill the prowess of our life.
He who does not live to enjoy life but to accomplish something that requires self-denial has great tranquility when achieving it: as much happiness as is possible on Earth. He is aware he sought to do what he ought and did it with all his might.[4]
Notes:
[1] 10-2-72.
[2] Fr. Damien von Veuster (1840-1889) was beatified in 1995.
[3] 10-2-72.
[4] 10-2-72.