Suffering was a curse from which man fled; now it becomes a purification
of the soul, a sacred trial sent by eternal love, a divine dispensation
meant to sanctify and ennoble us, an acceptable aid to faith, a strange
initiation into happiness. O power of belief! All remains the same, and
yet all is changed. A new certitude arises to deny the apparent and the
tangible; it pierces through the mystery of things, it places an
invisible Father behind visible nature, it shows us joy shining through
tears, and makes of pain the beginning of joy.
And so, for those who have believed, the tomb becomes heaven, and on the
funeral pyre of life they sing the hosanna of immortality; a sacred
madness has renewed the face of the world for them, and when they wish
to explain what they feel, their ecstasy makes them incomprehensible;
they speak with tongues. A wild intoxication of self-sacrifice, contempt
for death, the thirst for eternity, the delirium of love--these are what
the unalterable gentleness of the Crucified has had power to bring
forth. By his pardon of his executioners, and by that unconquerable
sense in him of an indissoluble union with God, Jesus, on his cross,
kindled an inextinguishable fire and revolutionized the world. He
proclaimed and realized salvation by faith in the infinite mercy, and in
the pardon granted to simple repentance.
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