IV
Not all griefs exalt us and add to us. There are some that are sterile, withering, unconfessable.
Such griefs bring only misery and impoverishment. In the moral order they stand for debts and failures. However great may be our blind indulgence for ourselves, we cannot, on principle, impute them to ourselves. They do not bear the stamp of destiny but of our own baseness.
Who, indeed, would wish to share them with us, when we do not even let them appear?
Who would wish to associate himself with our weaknesses, our shames, our jealousies, our betrayals? Who can feel sympathy for a grief that disavows everything pure and generous that exists in us? No mention is made of these griefs in the Beatitudes.
Christ himself might ask us to kiss the face of a leper. But what charity could so sacrifice itself as to embrace our shame and our degradation?
That is the cup we must put away from our lips.