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Be eager to adore, yearn to make reparation, suffering quietly and calmly. Then Jesus' words will come alive in your lives: 'he who does not take up his cross and follow me, is not worthy of me'. Our Lord becomes more and more demanding with us. He asks us to make reparation, to do penance, and the time comes when he makes us experience a fervent desire to want 'to live for God, nailed on the Cross with Christ'. But 'we have this treasure in vessels made of clay', which is fragile and brittle, 'to show that the power that shines through us is not ours but God's'.

'We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not without hope,' or sustenance; 'we are persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; we carry about continually in our bodies the dying state of Jesus.'

We may even imagine that Our Lord does not hear us; that we are being deluded, that all we hear is the monologue of our own voice. We find ourselves, as it were, without support on earth and abandoned by heaven. Nevertheless, we have a real and practical horror of sin, even venial sin. With the stubbornness of the Canaanite woman, we go down on our knees as she did, adoring him and imploring 'Lord, help me.' The darkness will vanish, vanquished by the light of Love.

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