If I have brought any message today, it is this: Have the courage

“If I have brought any message today, it is this: Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity. Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world.” Thus spoke Antonin Scalia, a man of unshakable conviction and fierce intellect, whose life was lived at the crossroads of faith, reason, and public duty. In these words, Scalia calls us to a kind of moral bravery—the willingness to stand firm in one’s beliefs even when the world mocks, misunderstands, or despises them. His message is not merely religious; it is timeless. It speaks to every generation that must choose between the comfort of conformity and the cost of truth.

Scalia, a Justice of the United States Supreme Court and a devout Catholic, knew well the loneliness of conviction. He lived and worked in a culture increasingly distant from the spiritual and moral principles that guided him. Yet he never allowed the fear of ridicule to silence his conscience. When he spoke of being a “fool for Christ,” he was invoking the ancient wisdom of Saint Paul, who wrote to the Corinthians that the “foolishness of God is wiser than men.” Scalia’s words are a clarion call to those who would live not for the applause of men, but for the approval of the eternal.

To have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity is to reject the tyranny of worldly approval. It is to walk a path that the crowd scorns, to live by truths that cannot be measured by fashion or popularity. The ancients called this fortitude, the virtue of standing in the storm without bending. The philosopher Socrates was condemned for such courage, for daring to speak truths that Athens could not bear to hear. To the mob, he seemed a fool; to history, he became a sage. So too, Scalia reminds us that wisdom often wears the cloak of folly, and that those who follow conscience over consensus will often be branded as foolish by those too timid to think beyond the age’s opinion.

In our own time, consider the example of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who stood against the Nazi regime when silence would have been safer. He followed his faith into danger, imprisonment, and death, believing that to obey God rather than man was the only path of honor. To his captors, and to many even among his peers, his resistance seemed reckless—a kind of madness. Yet in history’s light, his “foolishness” shines as divine wisdom. Bonhoeffer lived Scalia’s teaching before Scalia spoke it: he had the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world in order to serve the truth that cannot be compromised.

Scalia’s challenge is not only to the believer, but to all who would live authentically in a cynical age. He speaks to the artist who refuses to conform to trends, to the thinker who questions accepted dogmas, to the moral soul who chooses integrity over convenience. The “sophisticated world,” as he calls it, is often built upon pride—an endless pursuit of cleverness, applause, and self-justification. But sophistication without humility leads to emptiness, and brilliance without goodness becomes cold. True wisdom, Scalia teaches, is not about appearing right to others, but about being right before one’s own conscience.

His words burn with both warning and hope. To follow one’s inner truth—be it faith, justice, or moral conviction—will always invite ridicule. Yet it is in that very suffering of contempt that the soul is purified. The mockery of the world cannot wound the one who has found peace in what is eternal. Scalia urges us to measure success not by the standards of prestige or popularity, but by the courage to act with integrity. To “be a fool for Christ,” or for truth itself, is to be free—to stand apart from the illusions of the age and to live in the clear, untamed light of conviction.

Therefore, let this be the lesson carried forward: do not fear the laughter of the world when you walk in truth. Be steadfast in your convictions, even when they bring isolation. Speak your beliefs not with arrogance, but with courage. Seek not to appear wise, but to be wise—to live by principles deeper than approval and stronger than ridicule. The world has always despised those who love what is pure and eternal, yet it is such souls who shape history, who awaken conscience, who redeem the times. For as Antonin Scalia teaches, true wisdom is often misunderstood, and true courage is found not in winning the world’s praise, but in enduring its scorn with faith, grace, and unyielding strength.