The Art of Being a Diehard

In our valley of tears, life can be tough. Today in 2026, however, toughness is the privilege of firefighters and soldiers. Ideally even soldiers of a distant past, such as Ulysses, Achilles or Alcibiades. Our contemporary TV heroes, on the contrary, present themselves as ‘softly boiled eggs’, as they suffer from hypochondria, unshaved beards, lack of attention and other general discomfort. Any kind of obligation is blown up to incredible proportions. Life is totally unbearable at more than ten metres from the swimming pool. A famous metaphor for our culture would make the story of the princess and the pea of Hans Christian Andersen.

This may explain our admiration for the very authentic character of police officer John McClane, performed by actor Bruce Willis. We admire this diehard police officer not so much because of his intellectual subtleness. We admire him because of his unwavering commitment to the good cause, his ‘never give-up’ attitude, his audacity and his willingness to suffer the worst of injuries with a modest smile. Toughness is not only a character trait. Toughness is a virtue and an indication of the more widely recognised virtue of courage.

In the Christian calendar we celebrate today Saint Agapitus of Palestrina, whose statue you can admire at the Duomo of Milan. Agapitus was still very young when he refused to participate in the Roman Army cult of Sol Invictus, imposed by emperor Aurelian. Therefore he was starved, scourged, hanged upside down, burned, fed to the lions, .. without much result until he finally got decapitated. Even compared to other spectacular cases of Christian perseverance, Agapitus must have been the ‘diehard’ John McClane of the Roman Christian martyrs. Of course, we need to remain aware that the traditional martyr stories did not so much aim at describing the historic events. They mainly aimed at supporting us in our faith.

Therefore, may the legend of Agapitus support us in our faith and may it encourage us to some toughness in daily life. The swimming pool is for next year. Let us return courageously to our workplace and let us practice the art of being a diehard.

Picture: By Yair Haklai - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Koppeling