Perseverance

We find no pleasure except in Christ; we neither value nor want to know anything but Christ crucified.  We even say, "I find my pleasure and want to glory in my Lord Jesus Christ, for whose love the world despises me and I the world."

Up then!  Since this holy cross is so sweet that is relieves all bitterness, pick it up for your journey along this road.  For we pilgrim travelers need this holy wood for support until we have reached our destination, where our soul is at rest in our final home.  How sweet to us now are the burdens we have carried along the way!  What peace, what calm, what sweetness our soul receives and enjoys once we have come home to port and have found the slain Lamb whom we had sought on the cross and who is now our table, our food, and our servant!  And we find that the divine Being is a bed where we now rest and sleep - I mean we have finally put an end to the perverse law that had been in constant rebellion against our Creator while we were journeying.  So let's happily and joyfully, with flaming, blazing desire take up the true standard of the most holy cross, never fearing that we will not be able to persevere in the life we have begun.  Let us rather say, "Through Christ crucified I will be able to do and endure all things, even to the point of death."

Saint Catherine of Siena

-Saint Catherine of Siena (1380), Doctor of the Church, was a Dominican, a stigmatist, and a papal counselor.