The Way of the Holy Cross

If you carry your cross cheerfully, it will carry you, and bring you where you wish to go, to the place where there will be an end to the suffering which can never end on earth. If you carry it grudgingly you will make it a heavy burden, and feel its weight the more, and yet you must bear it all the same. And if you cast away one cross, you will certainly find another and perhaps a heavier cross.

Do you think you can escape what no mortal man ever yet failed to meet? Was ever any one of the saints without his cross and trial upon earth? Even Jesus Christ our Lord, as long as He lived, was never for one hour free from the anguish of His passion. For "it behooved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, that He might enter into His glory." How then can you look for any other way than this royal way, the way of the holy cross?

The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis, Bk II, Ch XII