Carrying the Cross

More words of wisdom from Pope Benedict. This is taken from A New Song for the Lord:

Faith is the community of the cross, and only on the cross does it become complete. The place of final nondeliverance is the place where redemption really emerges. It seems to me that we have to relearn this piety of the cross in an entirely new way. It had appeared to us as too passive, too pessimistic, sentimental -- but if we do not practice the cross, how will we be able to carry it when it is imposed on us? A friend of mine who was dependent on kidney dialysis for years and had to experience how his life was gradually slipping away from him once told me that as a child he especially loved the stations of the cross and liked to do them later in life as well. When he learned of the awful diagnosis, he was at first stunned, but then it suddenly occurred to him: What you have always prayed is now becoming serious; now you may really accompany him and be taken up into the way of the cross by him. In this way my friend regained his serenity, which radiated from him right up to the end and let the brilliance of faith shine forth for all to see. To express it with [Romano] Guardini's words: We have to relearn "what kind of liberating power lies in overcoming oneself; how suffering which is inwardly accepted transforms a person; and how all essential growth not only depends on work, but also on freely offered sacrifice."