You're listening to Catholic Sprouts, the daily Thursday, October 7th, 2019.

This week on the Catholic Spouts podcast, we are talking about fortitude, about strength.

We have already talked about St. Elizabeth and how she had such confidence in God.

We talked about the Roman martyrs and how they approached death, knowing that if God is for us,

who can be against us? Yesterday we heard the incredible story of Samson, who was the strong

man of the Old Testament.

And we learned that we need to be obedient to God to receive his great gifts.

Now today, we are going to look at a different type of fortitude.

And to do that, we are going to look at the greatest example of every single one of these virtues,

and that is Mary. Now, you might think of fortitude as something that Samson had. Sure, he was strong

enough to wrestle and kill a lion with his hands. But what can we learn about strength and fortitude from Mary? Well, we can learn a whole

lot, actually. So here are two things I want you to remember about the great climb that we are

doing to holiness. First of all, we need to have fortitude in order to have any of the other virtues.

In order to persevere in prayer and suffering and all of these things, we need to be strong.

We need to be tough.

Also, the whole walk to holiness is characterized by moving forward, despite any sort of resistance

or hardship that we might encounter. It's about putting one foot in front of the other,

even when we want to quit, even when it's hard. That is what holiness is about, to keep at it.

And we can see this so clearly with Mary. Now, let's review what happened at the passion.

Remember, when Jesus was taken to the high priest and then to Herod and then to Pilate,

all of his followers abandoned him.

The best that he got is that Peter stood out in the courtyard and pretended that he didn't

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