The Paratroopers prayer

Being a military history buff, I was going through a passage that caught my attention, it was about a french Lieutenant André Zirnheld who was killed in action fighting alongside the elite SAS in North Africa during the Second World War.

Many good men from both sides had tragically fallen in this war (God rest their souls) yet there's something holy and stoic about this man. When they went through his body they found a prayer he had written down a few years earlier in his officer's notebook, this will go on to become the "Paratroopers prayer" it goes like this:

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I'm asking You God, to give me what You have left.
Give me those things which others never ask of You.

I'm not asking You for rest, or tranquillity.
Nor that of the spirit, body, or mind.

I'm not asking You for wealth, success, or even health.
All those things are asked of You so much Lord, that you probably don't have any left to give.

Lord instead give me what You have left.
Give me what others don't want.
I want uncertainty and doubt.
I want the tempest and battle.
And I ask that You give them to me forever Lord.

This, so I can be sure to always have them, because I won't always have the courage to ask for them from You again.
Give me what you have left Lord, because I can't ask them of myself.

Lord give me what you have left and what others do not want, but give me also courage, strength and faith.

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Surely every man's life is difficult in its own way and no man's life is easy, yet there would be times when we are so exhausted, so overwhelmed and so burnt out and heavy laden that we look towards heaven to do something, as if we deserve the consolation.

Yet here is André (a man who has volunteered for this) who by no means had it easy -being a teacher from France which had been defeated and occupied, volunteering to fight with the french forces in exile (free-french) and with an elite British unit, known for the high risk missions and eventually going on one such mission that finally took his life... Yet has the audacity to write what he did... One might even think he's a sadist who derives pleasure from that pain, yet he is not, being shot and bleeding and in tremendous pain as his comrades rushed him in a jeep through a rugged desert, eventually succumbing and dying in the vehicle.

He was not crazy for asking that, on the contrary I see in him a desire for a unique masculine virtue: Fortitude. Which I am sure he was granted eventually. This aligns well with the concept of Magnanimity of Aquinas, the need for the soul to push towards the greatness it was meant for.

And sometimes to achieve greatness means to endure the tiring work shift without slack, a boring day without excess screen time, to get out of bed without snoozing the alarm, to push through a heartbreak and to not suppress or damp out the noise within- and yes to take out your ear pods (at least for a while) when in commute.
Not because it was wrong to seek those consolations, but to spend a moment in the discomfort and unsettling of the pain, the grind and in the mundane to see the face of Christ in this and every irrecoverable predicament that is simply out of your control. Hence being transformed by the Grace which is provided with the trail that is permitted.

In short endure the pain without an excess of painkillers, because the latter too is lethal in an overdose. The grace and strength of God is sufficient to get through and hence receive the virtues that He wants to adorn you with, for virtue like a muscle must be trained, and instead of sets and reps it's these inescapable pains of life that cause the spiritual muscles to grow, if endured rightly.

Deo vobiscum.