“Critics are loud, but success is louder.”

You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water. - Rabindranath Tagore: (1861 –1941: he became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913)

Gospel Text: (MK 12:35-37)

As Jesus was teaching in the temple area he said,

"How do the scribes claim that the Christ is the son of David?

David himself, inspired by the Holy Spirit, said:

The Lord said to my lord,

'Sit at my right hand

until I place your enemies under your feet.'

David himself calls him 'lord';

so how is he his son?"

The great crowd heard this with delight.

To grow in fortitude one must develop the habit of living with confidence in God's saving power.  This will not make our problems go away, but it will give us the wisdom to see them in a new light; as something to be borne and offered for the glory of God.  Above all, the virtue of fortitude reinforces within us the conviction that we are on God's side and that He is on ours.  And "if God is for us, who can be against?" (Romans 8:31).