[Paraphrasing Jesus:] “I did not wipe tears from the face of sorrow to lay sorry by. I did not touch pain with a fierce redeeming beauty to have done with it; I cannot give myself into the arms of death to cast death aside! I made all these things my own that they glory of these things should be yours, that while they remain with you, I shall remain with them.”

He has taken all those things to himself, and has changed them for us. Sorrow has not ceased to be sorrow, but it is no longer simply a punishment, it is something with its power of healing in itself, something that redeems, something that makes joy possible to men.

Christ experienced the bitterness of sorrow, living our life, that we might experience its splendor living his…

…having taken the weakness of our nature, he has made it or strength. Now, if we set out to bear one another’s burdens, we know that however heavy they are, however hard to us, Christ has already borned them, and bears them now.

-Caryll Houselander-

This War is the Passion