Carol, we often hear about “putting an end to suffering”, don’t we – and I think that is a good thing in the sense of needless personal suffering caused by our ego, uncontrolled emotional reactions, etc., and in the sense of alleviating the suffering of the hungry/poor/downtrodden of the earth – but there is no one who will avoid the suffering that comes simply from being a human being on this planet, and it is this inevitable suffering (and all our daily sufferings and struggles) that Christ wants us to consciously and willingly unite to His own; and this is what I think the greater part of the non-Catholic spiritual teachers/self-help writers (and I’m talking here not of the world’s great religions, especially the mystical strand of each of those religions, but of the current non-denominational-type gurus and speakers of today, as well-intentioned as many of them are, and from whom I’ve certainly benefited in many other ways and areas) don’t grasp: the paradox of the joy in suffering. [and I believe von B. is speaking of John, the beloved disciple...oh, who else could he have meant, begging for love like that...]

What is truly dysfunctional is thinking we can get to it without actually laying down one’s life, in Him, for His friends.

To which John is he referring who in the end who had only a begging for love left to him? The one who had to ask, “Are you He Who Is to come, or shall we look for another?”, or the one of whom He said, “What’s it to you if this one is not martyred in the same way as the rest of you?”

How hard we fight the wrong things within.