“THERE is, throughout history, a melancholy sameness in the reactions of mankind, sighing for redemption, to the Redeemer that would answer its appeal. ‘As it is Jesus Christ, yesterday and to-day and the same for ever,’ so man, looking for salvation, is yesterday and today and the same for ever. The one thing fallen man desires to know is how to live his life on earth so as to be happy. This is the very thing that Jesus desires to let him know. And yet, as was prophesied by Simeon, the Redeemer ever remains ‘a sign to be contradicted.’ The sick world, like a patient in the delirium of fever, is for ever turning on its physician and submitting him to violence and maltreatment. It is because the problem of happiness is so intimately bound up with the problem of pain. There is no purification of soul without suffering. Through purification the soul reaches that close intimacy with God and that vision of Him, which makes the soul happy. When men are told that the beatitude they seek is conditioned by suffering, they find the doctrine a hard saying. They will have none of it, and will continue to indulge the hope that they can reach the goal of human desire another way.”

— Fr. Edward Leen, Why the Cross?

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