Bravery

It takes a lot of chutzpah to write to the Pope,

especially when you're taking it on yourself

to chide him for neglecting his solemn duty.

Catherine did it just because it was right

and she had trained herself to do right always,

probably, as we all could do, by choosing

the harder way in little daily trials.

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If we ever want to live a blessed life

free from the fretful trials besetting mortals,

we must learn to act in the universal plan

as one of its actors, not as its director.

We do that by training our muscles in small courage.

Then it is there when we need it to be large.

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Catherine of Siena was a young woman with no title, no office, and no reason to expect the Pope would listen to her. Yet she wrote to him anyway, urging him to do what she believed was right. Most of us like to think we would do the same in our own moment of testing. But philosophy—true philosophy—is not about imagining an heroic choice. It’s about training ourselves, day by day, to make the right choice.

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Late in the fourteenth century, Catherine of Siena—then in her twenties—wrote to Pope Gregory XI, urging him to return the papacy from Avignon to Rome. She was neither a noblewoman nor a scholar. She was the daughter of a wool-dyer. Yet she spoke to the pope as an equal in moral standing, as indeed all conscientious people should be. The politics were dangerous. Such effrontery, even from a nobody like Catherine, could spark retributive anger. But she chose to tell the truth rather than cower.

Religion and philosophy are not storehouses of beliefs, quotations, and ready-made opinions. They are about living well. They are the daily translation of principles into actions. They are the lifelong, repeated asking of one question, “Will you live this truth, even now?”

Knowing what is right is rarely difficult. Eliminate the options that serve only ourselves, and the right one is usually close at hand. The hard part is standing by the right choice when it causes pain—especially for ourselves. This is why ignorance is hardly even an excuse for bad behavior. We do not often act wrongly because we do not know what is right. We act wrongly because we hesitate, we fear consequences. When we do so, we betray not only ourselves but all our fellows, who are bound together in a universal web of mutual responsibility.

As Dostoevsky said, we are guilty before all, for all—not in the legal sense, but because no soul lives in isolation. To withhold courage is to burden someone else. Unresisted injustice finds the path into the lives of others cleared. Catherine knew this. She could have remained silent in the safety of her Dominican lay community. But she knew that withholding her voice would lessen the resistance to pressure on someone else.

Was her act heroic? Perhaps. But isn’t a hero simply someone who does the right thing when the wrong thing would be easier? Surely such courage is trained in the small choices of everyday living: defending someone who is being criticized unjustly, rejecting a popular falsehood, restoring a lost possession the owner would never miss, being kind to those who are difficult to be kind to. Each little choice like this requires us to break the easy alliance between conscience and comfort.

Living courageously is not a matter of temperament. It is the result of trained attention. We must notice, again and again, when the small moment arrives in which we must lean toward or away from the good. We must welcome that moment and regard it as an exercise in the practice of virtue, even when it comes at personal cost.

This discipline of living begins in reflection. We take stock of what we already know to be true, and we decide in advance how we will stand when the temptation to be false arises. We keep in mind those who steadfastly faced the greatest trials. We remind ourselves that fear is fleeting, but the shame of cowardice lingers.

Living well does not happen to those who merely think lofty thoughts. Every choice can make it either easier or harder to act rightly at the next choice. If we choose rightly often enough, those choices will become effortless—the surest sign that we are finally living well. Then we will finally know that our philosophy or our religion lives in us as it lived in Catherine—not as a removable ornament, but as a permanent possession.

Put down the book and look to your day. The chance to live what you believe is always right here, in the next conversation, the next interaction, the next unexpected event, the next silence.

The question is already waiting: will you live your philosophy—right now?