Of all of the spiritual gifts that God gives us, I wonder if any is more timely or useful than the grace to be courageous. Time and again we are challenged by fears of various kinds. But for the believer, courage is a constantly needed gift to accompany faith.

Think of all of the needs that we have for courage in order to follow Christ at various stages of life. For example, our young people face tremendous pressures. On the one hand, they learn the love for Christ and a whole code of moral values that guide their life. They learn that, as Catholics, we have obligations that are part of our identity, such as attending Mass every Sunday.

Then they turn on the television or listen to the music downloaded onto their iPod, and they are bombarded with the values of a secular and individualistic world, values that would make them accepted and popular within our culture.

But those values are frequently in contradiction to Christ, and often to the teaching of their parents and family. They are told that Mass is boring or at least not worth their time and that we can pick and choose our morals as long as we don’t seem to hurt anyone else.

And so, even at a young age, we are faced with a choice: be faithful or be accepted by the in crowd. Our young people need courage to choose Jesus Christ.

When they are a little older, our faithful reflect on the role of family and particularly of marriage as the foundation of the family. But society does not support marriage as it once did.

Cohabitation, divorce and the efforts to redefine marriage away from God’s plan of a lifelong commitment between a man and a woman make our young people wonder if it is worth the effort. Some fear that staying together for a lifetime is not even possible.

How many of our young men and women are secretly afraid to commit to the beauty of marriage? Marriage takes courage.

Once married, couples face more decisions that require courage if they are to give themselves to Christ. The gift of sexuality is a sacred moment in married life that is always used to unite the couple to each other and to God. Openness to children and rejecting artificial contraception and sterilization in order to give oneself fully to one’s spouse is counter-cultural.

It takes courage to trust God and your spouse. And even more courage to talk to others about this gift.
And, of course, for mature followers of Christ of all ages, there are simply the pressures and challenges to join the secular crowd.

To speak of any universal or enduring values that bind all of us is to risk ridicule and maybe even scrutiny from the IRS. Intimidating followers of Christ into submission or silence is one of the great tactics of our modern age.

The fact is, we all desire to be courageous. We know it’s the right thing to do.

How often do we feel the desire to follow Christ and to live out fully our Catholic faith? But deep inside, don’t we fear that we will fail at that crucial moment, as Peter did?

When temptations or the pressures of our secular world come, will we be able to stand strong?
“Lead us not into temptation,” we pray each time we recite the prayer Jesus himself taught us. Jesus knew us well.

As the pressures against the freedom of religion mount, with society increasingly at war with itself as it seeks to worship the individual and ignore our societal moral decline, what is increasingly needed is the joyful but courageous witness of Christ’s followers.

Those are the characteristics of holiness, and now is the time for us to step forward with courage and live as saints.