Photo montage with statue of Saint Joan of Arc in Paris. Aurora seen from the city of Guarulhos (São Paulo)
A man who fights for his rights deserves respect. One who fights for true principles and ideals deserves even more: admiration. [Agrarian Reform, a Question of Conscience, op. cit, p. 200]
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
In This Chapter
In the First Crusade, the regular army – of knights who took the cross in 1095 to free the Sepulcher of Christ – totaled perhaps a million men. They were an undying example of disinterested and self-sacrificed love for an ideal. Indeed, a love they took all the way to the sacrifice of their lives, for by the time of the taking of Jerusalem in 1099, there were only 40,000 exhausted Crusaders. The others had already died.
The time of the medieval Crusades is gone, but their fighting spirit, the crusading spirit, remains. In this Chapter, after talking about dedication, Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira — the “Crusader of the twentieth century” — tells us about something of which he was a renowned master: the fight.
To Live Is to Fight
After original sin, fighting is not the spice of life. It is the meaning of life.
No love of the Good is effective if, in the face of egregious actions against this Good, one fails to rise in protest against evil with terrible incompatibility. [June 9, 1983]
In our situation, more than any other, a man who loves God must understand that he was not born for himself.
He has no right, therefore, to live worried about doing his will and leading the kind of life he enjoys. If he has this concern, he is unworthy of being born in the century he was born.
One Is Either Imbued with the Fight Or Frustrated
The whole life of a man who does not fight is one of frustration. We are on earth to fight. If we do not, frustration ensues. Neither pleasure nor relaxation prevents frustration.
I will say more: prayer without a fighting spirit does not prevent frustration.
Courage is peaceful. The courageous man has peace because he decided to run the risk and, therefore, faces risk because of the resolution he made.
However, this presupposes a constant struggle against fear, for a brave man is not the one who is not afraid. Only a hothead is not afraid. A courageous man is afraid but overcomes fear!
Discouragement ushers in the most dangerous of feelings, the one that most profoundly undermines man: self-pity. It is like an inner, gnawing worm that destroys you. When someone begins to feel sorry for himself, he must become suspicious of everything, for he can be led anywhere. [March 25, 1973]
By coming into this earthly exile, man lost everything he lost but, in a sense, gained something else: the fight became much harder for him. Facing this fight entails much more suffering, and at the apex of this struggle is the Word of God, Who died for us and redeemed us. It was the fight of fights, the tragedy of tragedies, the sublime of the sublime: the Redemption of mankind.
Oh! felix culpa! [From the Catholic Liturgy (Easter Vigil)] It is battle, warfare, opposition, inconformity and everything else. [May 16, 1981]
St. Augustine (354-430)