Do not be frightened

We know we can be courageous despite all that, and that courage consists not in ceasing to feel but in self-conquest.

Ah! What a beautiful word and what a beautiful thing! To become little by little our own masters, no longer to be tugged by a bundle of feelings which drags us along and leaves us disordered as by a panic. No, to know where we are going; to recognize the fact that it is not fun, but not to stop because of that; to accustom our reason to making decisions and our will to accomplishing the decisions of our reason; and to accustom our will to move only in the wake of the will of God: that is what is worthy of our status as children of our heavenly Father, as disciples of the Resurrected One, of him who has conquered death, who is triumphant and who was not found in the tomb, who will never be found there, because he is life.

This is what, little by little, will make us into those calm, magnanimous beings, capable of progress and useful to others, that we can and should become, instead of those inconsistent, emotional individuals, resembling puffs of fog that the wind blows hither and thither, that revolve ceaselessly and finally have no more will power than is needed to contradict, and to "want something else" but never exactly what reason demands, or what those who are in charge of us advise.