Our ultimate goal is to be able to think and behave like Jesus.  This is a journey toward great love, which invariably becomes a journey of great suffering.  This journey leads us to a divine love where we don’t just love those who love us.  We learn to participate in a larger love—where we experience Someone Else loving through us, in us, and for us.  If we remain autonomous, independent, self-sufficient, we cannot participate in this larger love.

Christian spirituality is a mystery of participation.  Thus the saints and mystics speak so much of surrender, abandonment, and even “falling” into God.

— Fr Richard Rohr