As we have seen throughout this book, the revolution he accomplished was the victory of a strange new power, the power of covenant love, a covenant love winning its victory not over suffering, but through suffering.

The myth of purgatory is an allegory, a projection, from the present on to the future. This is why purgatory appeals to the imagination. It is our story. It is where we are now. If we are Christians, if we believe in the risen Jesus as Lord, if we are baptized members of his body, then we are passing right now through the sufferings which form the gateway to life.

The gospels offer us not so much a different kind of human, but a different kind of God: a God who, having made humans in his own image, will most naturally express himself in and as that image-bearing creature; a God who, having made Israel to share and bear the pain and horror of the world, will most naturally express himself in and as that pain-bearing, horror-facing creature.

Suffering and dying is the way by which the world is changed. This is how the revolution continues.

The Psalms welcome us to a faith where God's agenda is more important than ours and where we are asked to live out our faith in the context of a disastrously broken world. But this is also precisely where we experience the highest personal joys, as we put our hope in the covenant love of the Lord and make the pursuit of his glory the goal of our lives.

Suffering confronts us with the fact that life is not about us but about God. It is not about our glory but his.

The crisis of faith that often accompanies suffering is the result of a collision between our will and God's will and our glory and his glory.

If this core mystery of the Christian faith (which I believe can never be truly articulated) is true, and that the Creator not only took part in the human drama, but suffered in that drama, perhaps we have an understanding and compassionate God, not one out to get us?

One cannot have contentment in the Christian life without the darkness. Dying is the only path to resurrection, and that is the only way of knowing God. There is no shortcut. Jesus himself is our model for this.

Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets before you.

The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing that they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.

I will show him how much he must suffer for My name.”