Three Christian Leaders and Three Character Traits

The essence of leadership is magnanimity and humility, so states Alexandre Harvard, French Catholic and Leadership Guru within the European Community. [Harvard: 2014, 2018] It is the willingness to take on great tasks in a quest toward greatness. It is further one’s effort to lead a full life, experience greatness, and to achieve self fulfillment in the process. God has created us to be great, while humility is to put one’s talents into the service of the community. One serves through teaching, inspiring and empowering others. When a leader displays magnanimity and humility toward greatness, they exhibit special qualities within themselves. These qualities are ‘prudence’, ‘courage’, ‘justice’ and ‘self mastery’.

Prudent people are practical. They can make deliberate decisions according to accurate perceptions on a matter and confront reality head on. In order to make the right decisions, you have to live by truth. As EWTN tells us, “Live truth, live Catholic.’ Our Catholic faith helps. Mother Teresa was prudent and practical. She believed that God had infinite love for each and every person, even the poor. And so she founded “The Mission of Charity”, a religious order, not a philanthropic organization as many wanted her to create. As a result, her faith and vision allowed The Mission of Charity to become one of the leading religious congregations of the Catholic Church. Her mission: ”I wanted to become a mother to the poorest of the world’s poor.” Did she accomplish her mission?

Courage involves both boldness and fortitude. People who are courageous with their apparent strong will, endure and stay the course. And, in the process of endurance, withstanding the test of time, they become creative souls. Stability within an unstable world is their audacious statement to others. How can you stand there and just take all of this?!

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn was courageous. He witnessed the truth about the Soviet Union, which seems to have been forgotten BTW from today’s media propaganda outlets. He did so, though he suffered imprisonment and exile. Solzhenitsyn in his many popular works such as ‘Gulag Archipelago’ and ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’, opposed both Lenin, Stalin and the entire Russian Revolution. He remained unfazed by it all and his truth won out. We all should re-read of the truths he expressed, the lies of communism, the tactics of Leninism and the practice of political tactics the Soviets utilized that are now in use today by modern governmental entities. We all should recount his Christian exhortation of the future consequences of such practices. His mission: “I wanted to be a memory; the memory of a people doomed to tragedy.” Did he accomplish his mission?

Justice is a personal virtue that exceeds its political concept. Harvard says justice is giving each one his due. What is due others? Well, nothing less than their personal dignity. Justice cannot be achieved without love and you cannot give people their due without loving them. Otherwise, you serve yourself and not others. God gave us personal dignity, why not our social systems? You may not like them, but you’ve got to love them.

Martin Luther King [MLK] practiced righteous wrath. Enough is enough is enough! His ‘I Have a Dream Speech’ was his dream for justice. MLK believed in the dignity and respect for every human being. And he was a dreamer who transformed his beliefs of justice into action. It was time for African Americans to receive their due. Justice to MLK was to confront evil with action, in a non-violent way. For evil is not necessarily what others do, but also what we do not do. So MLK was not only a man of justice, but a man of courage, a man of prudence, and a man of magnaminity. His mission: “to seek a beloved community where injustice ceases and love prevails”. Did he accomplish his mission?

And this is also true, that all the leaders mentioned above exhibited self control or self mastery. Self mastery requires the self control of impure desires [envy, freed, lust, pessimism, pride, etc.] while at the same time embracing noble desires [love, forgiveness of self and others, etc.] Managing our anger, yet allowing our self righteous wrath is a part of self mastery. MLK practiced it through nonviolence. It is mastering the heart, knowing when to say yes or no. It is yes to what will make us great, and no to what will defeat our own selves. Mother Teresa became despondent, yet held on to her prudent decisions. So, we must acknowledge the evil passions within us, our sins, and accept the truth about ourselves. Self mastery on the other hand with proper self management, helps us preserve our own self dignity and opens ourselves up for greatness. Solzhenitsyn bore imprisonment and ongoing slashes of Soviet wrath. Each of the above individuals were not obsessed with themselves and their own image, but rather for service of the greater good. They energized their noble passions toward service. It is self mastery that unlocks our potential for greatness. And that service is carried by a mission that continues to compel us, their adherents.