Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Warlords

John Zmirak and his heroes.
Such lofty magnanimity breathed forth from enormous souls like St. Edmund Campion, who earnestly prayed for his Anglican torturers from the scaffold; St. Maria Goretti, who forgave her murderer (and would-be rapist) with her dying breath; St. “Padre” Pio, who patiently endured campaigns of slander that led to his suspension from the public exercise of the priesthood; and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose long years in labor camps led him to conversion, and to novels in which he treated even Communist kapos with compassion.
Compared to such spiritual grandeur, the thin-skinned vanity of Achilles, the transgressive glee of Machiavelli, seem petty and adolescent. The pre-Christian “honor” ethos that led so many noblemen to kill or die in duels was not in fact “tougher” or more realistic than the Christian code of humility and patience. Genghis Khan may have left behind more descendants than St. Francis of Assisi, but which one left a better taste in history’s mouth? The pagan love of “glory” that Jesus deconstructed both by word and example gave way to something much more powerfully enduring: a love of the Good for its own sake, despite the hungry urgings of man’s insatiable ego. (Read entire post.)
Share

No comments: