More wisdom from Peter Kreeft

We can see this mystical equation of joy and suffering in all the events of Christ’s life, culminating in His Passion and death, which are neither an accident nor a postscript, appendix, or addition, but the very consummation, the fruit and flower, of His life. He lived backward, for he lived in order to die; and we can understand His life only if we follow his life with our thought and think backward, as we can understand a rose only if we look backward from the flower to the plant.

—PETER KREEFT from Doors in the Walls of the World