To be a follower of the Crucified means, sooner or later, a personal encounter with the cross. And the cross always entails loss.

The heart which has no agenda but God's is the heart at leisure from itself. Its emptiness is filled with the Love of God. Its solitude can be turned into prayer.

Our natural reason looks at marriage and turns up its nose and says, Alas! Must I rock the baby? wash its diapers? make its bed? smell its stench? stay at nights with it? take care of it when it cries? heal its rashes and sores? and on top of that care for my spouse, provide labor at my trade, take care of this and take care of that? do this and do that? and endure this and endure that? Why should I make such a prisoner of myself?

If God, like a father, denies us what we want now it is in order to give us some far better thing later on. The will of God, we can rest assured, is invariably a better thing.

By trying to grab fulfillment everywhere, we find it nowhere.

Our future may look fearfully intimidating, yet we can look up to the Engineer of the Universe, confident that nothing escapes His attention or slips out of the control of those strong hands.

True faith goes into operation when there are no answers.