How true fortitude and faith can heal our divided society

We live in an age of anxiety, full of anger and depression. The presidential candidates are clearly playing on both emotional states. There's need for healing. But there is also an invitation for courage.

That's what's maddening about politics these days — the lack of courage. The Republicans drive me the craziest because they supposedly believe abortion is a human-rights issue, but then they just dropped it in the hopes it would help them in November.

There's a reading in the Liturgy of the Hours of the Catholic Church from St. Ignatius of Antioch that always floors me. He's one of the Fathers of the Church, and he begs the faithful to let him die like the first martyrs if it comes to that.

"I will gladly die for God if only you do not stand in my way," he wrote.

In the Christian tradition, death is a new birth. It's not to be feared. We're human, so we fear it anyway, regardless of our religion. I've been amazed by the courage of people facing the possibility of death with grace, confident their prayers and sacrifices will somehow help others along the way.

"My desire is to belong to God," Ignatius wrote. "Do not, then, hand me back to the world. Do not try to tempt me with material things. Let me attain pure light."

So many of us live lives of doomscrolling and trying to make ends meet. But there's more. And the presidential election will likely distract us from that.

Even to speak of life's true meaning is countercultural. But Ignatius and other Christians were so confident in it that they were willing to die for it.

Ignatius knew his life was not simply about himself. He was more than merely grateful — he had a longing to serve the Creator.

Both political parties use and abuse emotions. Hope and joy and anger and resentment, all are stripped of their real meaning and exploited for base ends.

"Fear sometimes deprives of civil courage men who are living in a climate of threats, oppression or persecution," Pope John Paul II wrote in 1978. "The men who are capable of crossing the so-called barrier of fear, to bear witness to truth and justice, have then a special value," he said. "To reach such fortitude, man must in a certain way 'go beyond' his own limits and 'transcend' himself, running 'the risk' of an unknown situation, the risk of being frowned upon, the risk of laying himself open to unpleasant consequences, insults, degradations, material losses, perhaps imprisonment or persecution. To attain this fortitude, man must be sustained by a great love for truth and for good, to which he dedicates himself."

Courage. Fortitude. These are so much better than the hopelessness and cynicism into which we have been falling. Politics is not a reality TV show. It cannot deliver hope and joy. It cannot provide therapy for your anger. But even as we vote, we can do things that transform the world with a little courage.