The more you grow into love, into the message of Jesus–to say it in such traditional, defenseless terms–the more vulnerable you make yourself. You simply become more open to attack when you have become conspicuous or when “that of God” lights up in you.

When you spread your life around rather than hoarding it, then the great light becomes visible within you. To be sure, you enter into loneliness, often you lose friends, a standard of living, a job, or a secure career, but at the same time you are changed.

And the cross, this sign of isolation, of shame, of abandonment becomes, in this process, the tree of life, which you no longer like to be without at all. The dead wood of martyrdom begins to turn green. And you know at once where you belong.