Ave Maria Meditations
We are not spared dark nights. They are clearly necessary so that we can learn through suffering, so that we can acquire freedom and maturity and above all else a capacity for sympathy with others. A part of every human life is that it is only truly great and enriching if I am ready to deny myself for this other person, to come out of myself, to give of myself.
That is certainly true of our relationship with God, out of which all our other relationships must grow. I must begin by no longer looking at myself, but by asking what He wants. I must begin by learning to love. That consists precisely in turning my gaze away from myself and toward Him. With this attitude I no longer ask, what can I get for myself, but I simply let myself be guided by Him; When I abandon myself, let go of myself, then I see life is right at last, because otherwise I am far too narrow for myself.
Of course, it isn’t a journey you can make from one day to the next. If you’re interested in quick happiness, then it doesn’t work. Perhaps one of the reasons for the crisis in faith nowadays is that we want our pleasure and our happiness at once, and not to take the risk of a lifelong venture, adventure made in the trust that this leap will not end in nothingness but that it is by its nature that act of love for which we were created. And which alone gives me what I want: loving and being loved and thereby finding true happiness.
Pope Benedict XVI from Benedictus
