Fortitude in the Esther season

Vita Pura!

Hey everyone, welcome to another great week in Lent! As you all know, one of the major things that Vita Pura promotes is self-sacrifice or mortification, so this week we want to elaborate on that idea through the story of Esther and the great cardinal virtue of fortitude in her story.

The Story of Esther:

The book of Esther is about an orphan Jewish woman (Esther, duh) who becomes a queen. Then Esther's adoptive father Mordecai (who is hanging around the palace because he's worried about Esther), refuses to bow to the king's evil right-hand man Haman (think Jafar from Aladdin) because Mordecai is Jewish and obviously will not worship false idols. This makes Haman so mad that he decides to kill all the Jews. Like every Jewish person ever.

Boy, that escalated quickly...


So Mordecai tells Esther that she needs to confront the king and save her Jewish people. In order to do this she must go before the king uninvited, a crime punishable by death. So Esther and her people and her maidens fast for three days (not the weak fasting that I do on Fridays during Lent like only limiting myself to three meals and a meager two classes of wine. These people didn't eat or drink anything for three days.) And then, in the face of almost certain death the heroic Esther goes before the king and Haman/Jafar in order to save her people.
AND IT TOTALLY WORKS!
The king listens to her, doesn't kill her, and Esther saves all of the Jewish people in the entire world. No big deal. And then unfortunately a lot of other people are executed, including Jafaman and his entire family. But what is really important here is Esther's courage.

Fortitude:

"The virtuous person is one who freely practices the good" (CCC 1804)

So what I want to take away from the story of Esther (however much I may have butchered it in my summary) is her perfect demonstration of the virtue of fortitude. Esther is NOT psyched to go and talk to the king, but through her fasting, prayer and focus on God, she works up the courage to do what is right. We are called to do the same thing.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines the cardinal virtue of Fortitude like this:

(1808) "Fortitude is the moral virtue that ensures firmness in difficulties and constancy in the pursuit of the good. It strengthens the resolve to resist temptation and to overcome obstacles in the moral life, The virtue of fortitude enables one to conquer fear, even fear of death, and to face trials and persecutions. It disposes one even to renounce and sacrifice one's life in defense of a just cause."

WOAH! What a great quote, that just totally rocked my world. There is so much awesome stuff in there!

So the moral truth, the good, and the just cause that Vita Pura is defending and pursuing is human care for God's creation. This includes promoting community, simple living and protection and proper use of nature and all the other great stuff that we've talked about in our previous meetings.
Last week we set four concrete goals that we felt would make a small difference in our lives, so this is a great follow up for that. One of the reasons that we set these goals is because it is so easy for us to forget about our impact on the earth. Like we talked about last week, everything we do has an effect but it is not always easy to remember. This is where fortitude comes in. We will not always be saving an entire race of people from annihilation like Esther, but we are defending a just cause and the virtue of fortitude can keep us on track when we get lazy, forgetful or weak.  Fortitude "ensures firmness in difficulties".

The goals that we set for ourselves dealt with sacrifice in pursuit of simple living. The catechism clearly says that fortitude "disposes one even to renounce and sacrifice one's life in defense of a just cause." How perfect is that for us? Totally perfect.

Moreover, remember what we talked about two weeks ago -- God gives us dominion, like we are kings and queens of the earth. We have a duty to our dominion and we must protect it and care for it. Likewise Esther is given dominion over her people as their queen. It is her duty to protect them because of this power even though she may be persecuted because of it. Now, we probably won't be killed for trying to get people to compost, but that doesn't mean that we won't suffer small persecutions nonetheless.

In Esther 4:14 Mordecai says to Esther:

"For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place and you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?”

He is basically stealing from Spiderman's Uncle Ben who said "With great power comes great responsibility."

We have been given great power. We have a great responsibility.  Let us pray for fortitude in order that we might always be fervently under God's will.

Wednesday Discussion

So for discussion on Wednesday I want to talk about the personal difficulties we face. If you read nothing else, read the big green quote from the Catechism and think about ways that fortitude can work in your life and in our small communities. If anyone wants to read the story of Esther, free to bring any quotes that you found applicable or inspiring.

We will also be going to morning prayer as a group after our meetings from now on. This week we are going to ask that each of us use a little of that time to pray for Vita Pura as a growing community and for it's members. Pray also for yourselves and the individuals of the group, that we may all increase in the virtue of fortitude!