Jesus who is our holiness...

To acknowledge that in our present age we have given the resurrection its true central place in our theology and, please God, in our lives, in no way contradicts what I have been saying [about the unprivileged humanity of Jesus]. I think a wrong idea is around that stressing the resurrection means by-passing a great deal of human suffering, much that, in the cold light of day, brings us face to face with the pettiness, the sickening pettiness and futility of our human lot, the sordid pettiness of our own being, a suffering utterly lacking in nobility, grandeur. This is false. Jesus delivered us from suffering in the sense that he has given it meaning, not in the sense that it is no longer there. Dying will feel like dying and yet it won't be real dying, because Jesus has destroyed death. So suffering feels like suffering and nothing else. to live the risen life of Jesus is to accept the human lot in all its bitterness as he did, and surrender to the Father in it and through it. It does not mean trying to live in a state of emotional elation that takes the edge off human suffering.

Now if what I am saying is true we can expect a wonderful flowering of the mystical life in the measure that the conditions already present are understood and exploited. For what is the mystical life but God coming to do what we cannot do; God touching the depths of being where man is reduced to his basic element? The mystical life is beyond our power, nothing we can do can bring us to it, but God is longing to give it to us, to all of us, not to a select few. He made us for this... to become his sons and daughters in very truth, with all that that implies. The prerequisite on our part is an acceptance of poverty, of need, of helplessness; the deep awareness that we need Jesus our saviour who alone brings God and man together, who is our holiness.

Ruth Burrows OCD - Guidelines for Mystical Prayer (Burns & Oates 1976, new edition 2007) (from the Introduction).