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The love of Jesus Christ that leads to his willing embrace of the crucified earthly destiny that appeared before him is both a model for how we are called to love and a revelation of God’s self-offering of control out of love. This model for how you and I are to love is not an invitation to masochism or some sort of foolhardy and dangerous behavior. Instead, it is an example of our willingness to accept both the suffering and the joy that comes with love. This revelation of God’s self-offering or sacrifice of control tells us a great deal about who Jesus Christ is and what God is like.

Solitude is truthful and often delightful, even when painful. Loneliness is a hell made up of the illusion of separateness.

When we realize that the road we have been following may not be the one that is best for us, we must have the humility to admit that we have strayed, that we have been mistaken, that God knows better than we the life that will lead us to him. Nothing is more difficult than admitting that we have failed, that we have sinned. We feel haunted by the past. No matter how willing we are to do penance and suffer and take on the heavy burden of our guilt, in the end the greatest humility is accepting the role the Lord has written for us.

How does transformation happen? Ladder-climbing Western culture, and the human ego, made the Gospel into a message of spiritual advancement—ascent rather than descent. We hopefully advance in wisdom, age, and grace, but not at all in the way we thought. Jesus got it right! He taught the way of the cross and not the way of climbing. We come to God much more by doing things wrong than by doing things right. God leveled the human playing field by using our sins and failures to bring us to divine union.

In our noisy, cluttered world, we need silence. Silence heals, refreshes, energizes, inspires, sharpens, clarifies. It simplifies.