The Crusading Knight: A Serious Man Who Wages War for the Faith and Races Toward Danger

Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

Chivalry is the spiritual and psychological attitude of a warrior who takes his condition as a warrior to its final consequences. He is a serious Catholic warrior. He fights first and foremost for the holy Catholic Faith.
Secondly, when he wages war he does it seriously, at the risk of being killed, and in order to kill. He does not get involved in a worthless, insignificant squabble. If he is at war, either he dies or his enemy dies. One of the two is finished!

The blow he strikes with his sword is meant to hew the enemy down. He knows he too may be killed with a blow. He wants to kill the enemy of the Faith and, if it is God’s will, then he wills to be killed in holocaust to the Faith. Therefore, he is a potential martyr.
For this reason, he completely covers himself in armor. He wants to live long, in order to fight for a long time, and to kill many without being killed. He does not retreat in the face of danger. Moreover, when danger approaches he does not move slowly towards it but races to meet it. Because he understands that when something causes us fear, we either gallop toward and over it, or we gallop away, in flight. Galloping is the result of danger. The only acceptable situation is to gallop forward!

So, in the face of danger, the knight wields his sword and spear and overthrows his enemy.
Well, if God allows him to be overthrown instead, as he rolls to the ground he already offers his life to God, asking the protection of Our Lady.
He is a serious man.

(Excerpt from a Palavrinha of Monday, September 25, 1989.)