Like the two criminals on either side of Jesus, our choice is between what we want and what is needed, between the will of our own desires and the will of God. To follow Christ means a willingness to surrender all, even to the point of losing one’s life for God’s sake. To surrender all is to embrace the vulnerability and openness of love, while the concomitant and alternative side of that passion is the inevitability of suffering. To follow Christ, in its simplest articulation, is to love. And love we must. We are created for and called to love to the point of suffering, perhaps even suffering to death.
— from The Last Words of Jesus: A Meditation on Love and Suffering by Daniel P. Horan, OFM
