Daily Virtue Quote – Pope Benedict XVI

“Love is indeed ‘ecstasy’, not in the sense of a movement of intoxication, but rather as a journey, an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and thus towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God: ‘Whoever seeks to gain his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will preserve it’ (Lk 17:33), as Jesus says throughout the Gospels (cf. Mt 10:39: 16:25; Mk 8:35; Lk 9:24; Jn 12:25).  In these words, Jesus portrays his own path which leads through the Cross to the Resurrection: the path of the grain of wheat that falls to the ground and dies and in this way bears much fruit.”