You are probably not being called to the martyrdom of blood, but you are all being called to holiness, and this entails taking up your daily cross. Courageous men and women do not consider their own advantage, their own well-being, their own survival as greater values than their fidelity to the Gospel. Despite all evident weakness, they vigorously resist evil. In their fragility, the power of faith and of God's grace shines forth....
Fortitude goes hand in hand with the willingness to sacrifice oneself in the imitation of Christ. The age of martyrdom has not passed....
What the first community of believers asked of God in times of trial was neither protection nor vengeance. Rather, they asked for the gift of being able to "proclaim in all boldness" -- to proclaim courageously -- the Word of God (cf. Acts 4:29).
Canada's Catholic physicians can ask the Lord for nothing less: the moral courage to act always with an upright conscience, to stand up for the truth of the moral order regardless of the cost, in the service of life and of its Author.
--J. Michael Miller, CSB; Courage and the Physician
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