For the Catholic seeking God in the mountains, there is an expression more proverbial and iconic than any other. It is a terse Italian phrase, scribbled onto a photograph in 1925 by the late Pier Giorgio Frassati. It remains not merely the key into his sanctified existence, but an insight into the true nature of climbing.

We Christian men are longing to be challenged to love, to conquer not the world or each other, but the evil one. Our minds were made for truth and in a world of relativism and banal platitudes we’re starving for it. If men are barbarian conquerors, then I can assure you there is only One who can conquer us in love and raise up a new type of army. We need Christ.

“Man was created for greatness—for God himself; he was created to be filled by God. But his heart is too small for the greatness to which it is destined. It must be stretched…” In this real quote, “greatness” is not ambiguous at all. And it is not success, or money, or fame, or even starting a great Catholic initiative – it is God himself. But he says our hearts are too small for our destiny. It’s a bit of a paradox – we were made to be filled to the brim with something we are incapable of being filled with. But this is why he says your heart must be stretched. They must be stretched because they have been restricted. Our hearts are restricted by our self-absorption, and must be stretched.

“I will fear, love and honor God above all others, even at the cost of my own life.” The early Church was full of martyrs. These men didn’t simply give up their lives for Christ, they faced their death with courage and — sometimes — even jokes! It is said that as St. Lawrence was being roasted to death on an iron grill, he teasingly told his torturers, “I am done on this side, turn me over.” Christ was so real to the early Christians that they counted death as nothing so long as they could be with Him. You may not have to die for your faith. But you may suffer from “soft martyrdom,” such as losing friends over your beliefs. The word “martyr” means “witness.” By holding true to Christ’s teachings, you are witnessing to a higher order of values.

Our world has become aggressively crude and divisive, while the societal pressures on men and boys to hate their own masculinity has taken its toll on all of us. So what are Catholic families to do? John Heinen recently joined The Homeschooling Saints Podcast to talk about Bringing Back Gentlemanliness.

And what about “polite”? We think of the word today as meaning, more or less, mannerly. A polite person is somebody with manners; somebody who has the kindness to say please and thank you. But in origin the word is closer to polish, with the sense that the polite person is a sort of gleaming silver teapot. From its Latin roots (politus, the past participle of polire, to smooth or polish) through its emergence in Middle English and well into the 1700s, the word meant a thing buffed up or cleansed or even organized, although other meanings also emerged. So it always is with important words.

After World War One [1914-1918] had been underway for 2 years, the long-reigning emperor of one of the warring empires --Austria-Hungary--died and the throne was succeeded by his grandnephew, Karl, a visibly saintly man, who spent his precious two years on the throne making multiple offers for peace that were rejected. This caused the war to be extended two more years and millions of more deaths. In 1918 WWI came to an end, the empire was dismantled with the help of masons and other anti-Catholics here and abroad, and Karl and his wife, Empress Zita, were arrested and literally shipped 2000 miles away to a Portuguese island called Madeira off the coast of west Africa, with their seven children following later. He died there soon after, in penury, at the age of 34, leaving his pregnant wife of ten years, the Servant-of-God Empress Zita, and seven young children.

When you work with your hands, you channel the way you’re made in the image and likeness of God. You resemble God the Father pouring Himself out in creativity, in divine generation.