Giving Up

“Did you ever imagine,” said Donna Rosario softly, “that you could ever willingly practice Christ’s humility, and not be humilitated?”

Timothy was silent for some minutes, and then he said: “No. You are right. But what should I do now? It has come to a crisis in my soul. Ought I to go back to the loneliness of my life as a Catholic, as it was before I knew that set? Should I make a real break and be quite alone? Ought I to give Cosma up? Of course she does not care for me and she never will.”

“I think,” Donna Rosario answered, “that it depends on whether you can be yourself with her, and in her environment. If you can’t then you are in a hopeless position anyway, for how can you really love, or be loved, if you cease to be yourself? To love you must possess yourself; God, Who is love, possesses Himself wholly, and give Himself to all that is. You possess yourself in so far as you are true to His plan of you, which is your own likeness of Christ. But I do not think that any drastic decision will be left to you. I am afraid that the war will sweep us all apart.”

— Caryll Houselander, The Dry Wood