"You will truly be free"

Just as there is such a thing as a vicious circle, a state of being imprisoned in the negative when one "no" leads to another and makes the whole thing ever more impossible to get out of, so there is also what could be called a healing circle of salvation, in which one "yes" gives birth to another.

It is important that in this the right relationship of nature and grace should always be safeguarded.  And agape that is not sustained and affirmed by my own nature, that aims at pushing the self to one side and challenging it, becomes sullen and obstinate.  It frightens the other person off and nourishes the internal conflict within myself.

The challenge of the cross is something quite different.  It reaches deeper: it demands that I give my ego into Jesus' hands, not so that he may destroy it but so that in him it may become free and expand.  The "yes" of Jesus Christ that I hand on is only really his if it has also become completely mine.

Thus a great deal of patience and humility also belongs to this way, just as the Lord has patience with us: it is not a headlong leap into heroism that makes someone a saint but patiently and humbly walking with Jesus, step by step.  Holiness does not consist in adventurous achievements of virtue, but in joining him in loving.  Hence the real saints are also the quite human, quite natural people in whom through the Easter transformation and purification what is human appears afresh in its total originality and beauty.