Integrity. Virtue.

Run the race so as to win.

We want to be fully alive, free and wise, formidable and trustworthy, courageous and noble… but how do we become free? How do we become strong? How do we cast off fear and the slavery of vice?

So many men are robbed of their latent potential by the pacifying platitudes and confused ideas of contemporary society. And though we Christians have an abundance of devotional faith (testimonies, novenas, apparitions) and doctrinal content (everyone can access Scripture and the Catechism), we have an excruciating dearth of the ‘how’ — the training itself.

The good news?

We are two thousand plus years deep into the most expansive, battle tested wisdom the world has ever known. To access this practical wisdom we desperately need — the training itself — we can tap the superabundant wealth of that ‘how’ in Catholic tradition. The Forge exists as an access point for precisely that: an immersive formation in that ‘how’ — so that we may become the men God created us to be and run so as to win.

This means that we must become men of virtue.

Virtue is the power to do good with stability, readiness, and ease. It’s the ‘athlete’ who moves with grace and finely honed instinct — masterful, agile. It is the ‘saint’ who navigates life with foresight and firmness. It is the hope of every Christian. We stand in need of virtue if we are to become the men God created us to be — true husbands and fathers, creative workers, just citizens, and faithful Christians.

It’s our responsibility to receive this inheritance of the Christian tradition by taking its wisdom to ourselves, that it might become our ‘flesh and blood,’ so to speak. Only then can we pass on its wealth to the next generation, to those entrusted to our care as husbands and fathers, and as citizens of the nation of Ireland.

Then, ultimately, we will have learned to live up to the words of Sacred Scripture:

‘As iron sharpens iron,
so one man sharpens another.’
(Prov. 27:17)