"Grace Under Pressure"

Ernest Hemingway described courage as "grace under pressure." Grace means gift, and pressure we all know: deadlines, job expectations, our own self-imposed expectations, financial pressures, especially acute these days, on and on. Many of us might remember the pressure cooker that was somewhat the stove top equivalent of today's convection oven or perhaps microwave: it cooked meat or vegetables very fast and left them tender and juicy. The food inside responded under pressure and yielded its best.
Today is the memorial of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, born Edith Stein who became a convert from Judaism to Catholicism and later a Carmelite nun. This at the time of the Nazi rise to power and its brutal campaign to eliminate all Jews. Edith and her sister were taken to Auchwitz where they died in the gas chamber. It took courage for a person to convert from Judaism to Catholicism in those days more than now, and even more courage under the pressure of the persecution, to remain firm in the faith until death. In our own Marist history, over two hundred brothers were martyred in Spain during the Civil war in 1936, displaying the same courage under pressure.
There's a lesson for us here, that under whatever pressures we exist, if we look at them as "gift" we can grow more, "cook faster" than when things are smooth and "going our way".
Bro. Rene