…The inexorable paradox rings down the ages, and if we are not careful it will sometimes sweep like a mighty wind through the cosy house we have built: he that lost his life shall find it. If we want to be all reality, we must first have felt that we are nothing. If we want to say, “I am myself,” we must first have learned to say, “It is you.”
There is an apparent contradiction between the lover and the master, between the man of vision and the man of power; but it will be real and irremediable unless we are willing to solve it by dying and being reborn. Unless the grain of wheat, falling into the ground, die, itself remains alone…
It is the saints who are independent: they have mastered themselves and are whole; they do what they like and no man can stop them, for they laugh at terror and torture, having nothing to lose. It is the saints who have power: they need not rely on bribery or blackmail or bayonets, for their power is really theirs, within them, and it is simply by being themselves that they sway the world.
When the lions lick the feet of Paulinus in the Roman arena, when Lawrence makes fun of himself on the gridiron, when thousands flock to the confessional of the illiterate Cure at Ars, when millions love and honour Bernadette because she was humble, when people lose their hearts to the saints not for what they do but for what they are, because in themselves they are real, in themselves they are lovely – that is power. Real power is like real happiness: you find it when you have stopped looking for it because you have found something even more important to do.
– Fr Gerald Vann, 20th century
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