All adventures of the spirit are a via crucis...
Every road to reconciliation involves a continual dying to self. None of those who travel this road can avoid trials and sufferings, even if they are sometimes tempted to run away from them.

To every Christian community God gives a place of peace and joy where we can rest in him alone and pass through both trials and days of gladness. Conversing with God stimulates fervor. It sets us in the communion of all the saints, alive or departed. It prepares and nourishes our communication with others by making us reflect God as bearers of his peace.

When, with two of my brothers, I met Pope John XXIII for the last time, he explained to us how he came to his decisions in very simple prayer, in serenity, in conversation with God. "I have a dialogue with God," he said, adding immediately: "Oh! very humbly. Oh! quite simply."

When someone converses with God, he does not expect any extraordinary illuminations. He knows that the most important thing, for himself and for others, is peace. Anyone who listens, by day or through the long watches of the night, is given the answer: peace!

Inner peace! Not a peace uttered by the lips while within there is war. Not a peace acquired once and for all, for there is still the burden of our own self and the incompletely healed wounds in which all kinds of feelings are still festering-bitterness, the passions seething in our flesh, illusions of impossible love or the discontent of love disappointed. All this weighs us down and tears us apart, but the peace of Christ is able to reach into the depths, even into the deepest wounds of our being...

No peace is possible if we forget our neighbor. Every day the same question rings out: "What have you done with your sister/brother?" A peace that does not lead to communication and brotherly communion is nothing but illusion. The person who is at peace with himself is led to his neighbor. He inspires reconciliation and peace among those who are divided.

The peace of Christ needs time to mature, for it must heal the wounds of trials and sufferings. But now they no longer overflow; they are kept within oneself, and their hidden presence releases vital energy. By inner harmony with God, a person of peace is already an anticipation of unity. This person carries others along with him...

Brother Roger, The Dynamic of the Provisional